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Famous Men Series 






McKINLEI 'S M VS'I ERPIfl I S. 



McKINLEY'S MASTERPIECES 



SELECTIONS 

FROM THE PUBLIC ADDRESSES IN AND 

< >UT < >F < I >NGR1 



oi 



WILLIAM M« KINLEY 






EDI iii' i'V K. I. 




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[NTRODIN 1< >RY STATEMEN I 

William McKinley stands high among 
America's greatest orators. This is the 

estimate of his own time, and it will be not 

less the verdict oi impartial history. Al- 
though his speeches have been many, m 
the halls .»i Congress, in political cam- 
paigns, and upon the thousand and one 
occasions where oratorical genius is de 
manded, there is no sameness, no monot 
ony, no dullness in the utterances oi 
M ( Kinli For clearness oi statement, 
irrefutable logi , vigor of expression, lofty 
moral tone, and those qualities which cany 
.nviction, he has had tew equals and no 

superiors. To read his spee< hes is to take 
lessons in the intricate problems oi Amen 

in political lite, and to gain a true percep- 
tion of the deeper philosophy underlying 

wise and salutary popular government. 
No American of this , in afford not 

t«. read McKinley's speeche To meet 

the needs ot the busy man, this selection <»t 



vii 



Vlll INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT. 

the masterpieces of McKinley's thought 
and diction has been prepared. And its 
compiler feels assured that no one will 
read even these few pages without gaining 
a higher ideal of public duty and a strongcr 
love of country. 



CONTENTS 

I '. i RODU< I' »R\ STA1 l-MI-.M . Vll 

Biographical Sketch • • xi 

I. The Republu an Par i y . - 1 1 

I. Brief \m> i" i hi Point. 

I I . I'.i ■ I 111 MlCHIG 

II The Pi nvi Tariff . 

i 

II. On i mi Mills Bill. 
[II. The ( i i ■ 

I V I'm I m;ii l COMM1 
\ \\ll\i I 
GIN 

V I I'm McKinley 1 »o. 

III. I III PURl IN "• I IN BA1 I "I 

I. 1 in W , 
I I. 'I'm Bl \< K < "i • 
III. Fair Eleciio 

\\ . I IN \N' I . . . 

I. Tin 1SI -I IEN1 

Bond 

II. I'm Silver Bill. 

V I'm Inn oi Labor . ioi 

I. M i i ii \i in I'm:'. 
1 1. I in Ami RIC w WOI KINGM \ 
I I I 1 in I.K.iii -HO W. 



X CONTENTS. 

VI. Educational Topics . . 108 

I. In a Nutshell. 
II. Our Public Schools. 

III. History of Oberlin Collegi 

IV. Education and Citizenship. 

VII. Religion 120 

I. To the Epworth Leaguk. 
II. An Auxiliary to Religio 

VIII. Miscellaneous Addresses . .126 

I. Civil Service Reform. 
II. Notification Address to Presi 
dent Harrison. 

III. Not a Candidate. 

IV. Prosperity and Politk 
V. Presidential Candidates 

VI. On Counting a Quorum. 

IX. Memorial Day and Patriotism 140 

I. Gems of Patriotic Expression. 
II. Memorial Day Address. 
III. The American Volunteer Soldi] 

X. Eulogies > . . 158 

I. James A. Garfield. 
II. Ulysses S. Grant. 

III. John A. Logan. 

IV. Abraham Lincoln. 

XL Occasional Addresses 190 

I. New England and the Future. 
II. July Fourth at Woodstock. 

III. Dedication of the Ohio Building 

IV. Business Man in Politics. 






BI< )(il< Al'IIK \l STs I I < II 

I \ the Directory published in 1877, nearly 
twenty years irs this modest noti< 

of one "i the newly elected members of the 
15 tli ( longri 

Wiii.i \m M- Kim i y. Ji I inton, was 

born at Miles, Ohio, February 26th, 1844; en 

listed in the United States Army in May, 1861, 

as a private soldiei in the 23d Ohio Vbl- 
unteei Infantry, and was mustered out 1 ip- 
tain of the same regiment and I Maj< 

was Prosecuting Attorn Stark County, 

( Mil... 1 • 1 and d to the 1.5th 

tigress as a Republican, n ng [< 
votes against 1 ',. 1 ■ ; v< »t II Sanborn, 

Democrat, and 2,441 votesfoi [ohn R. Powell, 
( rreenba< k ( andidate. 

This is the simple story told nearly twenty 
us ag a new member of that House ol 
Representatives, and the d. mveniently 

divides the career of William M< Kinley into 
two great periods. Up to that time the young 
man had mad gallant record as a soldi. 
since then lie has made an even greater record 

as a statesman. 

In ancestry McKinley is a mixture of the 

\i 



KINLEYS MASTERPIECES. 

i and the Puritan. His ancestors 
originally from the western part of Scot- 
During the religious persecutions they, 
wiili hundreds of Covenanters, tied to Ireland, 
-in that country the two brothers, James 
i William, came to America, about twenty - 
five years before the battle of Bunker Hill, 
lames, then only a boy, settled in York, Penn- 
sylvania, where he married, and his son David 
ght under Washington in the Revolution. 
This David Mckinley was the great-grand- 
father of the eminent statesman toward whom 
the the nation are now turned. After 

the War ol [812 David McKinley moved to 
umbia ( lounty, Ohio, where he founded the 
Buckeye branch of the McKinley family. 
Major McKinley's mother, now living in 
•us old age, was an Allison, of English 
>d. She is a woman of remarkable intel- 
ual powers and a finely developed moral 
His father, who died at the age of 
ir, was a highly respected citizen of 
I. the extreme southwestern township 
Jnal Western Reserve. 
William \h Kmley, Jr., enjoyed the advan- 
11. although not extensive, educa- 
Nis learning has been acquired in the 
university of the world, grappling with life's 
1 problems, rather than in the cloistered 
»f the academy. For a short time he 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. Xlll 

attended the Allegheny College, but, between 
study and school - teaching, he had not ad- 
vanced far when the conflict between the 
States broke out. In June, 1861, an effective 
orator, who had frequently told of the horrors 
of slavery, spoke one evening in front of the 
village tavern in the little town of Poland. 
He called upon the people to rise to put down 
the incipient rebellion, and to punish the trai- 
tors who had fired upon the Stars and Stripes. 
Among his listeners was young William Mc- 
Kinley, Jr., then only seventeen years old, who 
had for several terms been a country school- 
teacher. 

The patriotic spirit of this little Western 
Reserve town contributed one company to the 
23d Ohio regiment of the Union army. By a 
singular coincidence this regiment contained 
several names destined to rank high in the 
annals of fame, but none higher than that of 
the youthful school-teacher, who, against his 
father's wishes, had decided to bear his hum- 
ble part in the great task of saving the Union. 
Of this regiment William S. Rosecrans was a 
colonel ; Stanley Matthews, afterwards Justice 
of the Supreme Court, was the second officer, 
and Rutherford B. Hayes, afterwards Gov- 
ernor of Ohio and President of the United 
States, eventually assumed its command. 

McKinley enlisted as a private, became a 



xiv M( kinley's masterpieces. 

staff -officer under General Hayes, and for 
gallantry at Antietam was advanced to the 
the grade of Lieutenant by Governor Todd, 
of Ohio, and was afterwards brevetted Major 
by President Lincoln. It will thus be seen 
that the gallant Ohioan's military title is no 
idle compliment, but was honourably earned 
in the stubborn field of war. To relate the 
part which the brave young officer took in all 
the battles in which he was engaged would be 
a task beyond the limits of this sketch. Mili- 
tary records, in describing the battle of Ope- 
quan, fought under Sheridan, near Winchester, 
relate that early in the forenoon Captain Mc- 
Kinley, aide-de-camp, brought a verbal order 
to General Duval, commanding the second 
division, to take a new position. On receiv- 
ing the order, Duval inquired by what route 
he should move the command. After Mc- 
Kinley had suggested a route, Duval declared 
that he would not budge without definite or- 
ders, to which the youthful captain replied : 
" By command of General Crook, I order you 
to move your command up this ravine to a 
position on the right of the army." This 
forceful insistence, that orders intrusted to 
In in should be carried out, has been a prom- 
inent characteristic in McKinley's great ca- 
reer. Whether those commands have come 
from a superior officer in the field, or in the 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. XV 

voice of American electors, his loyal obedi- 
ence has been alike unflagging. 

General Sheridan, in his Memoirs, tells of 
meeting McKinley on his ride to Winchester, 
"Twenty miles away."' The acquaintan 
then formed ripened with the years, and is 
among Major McKinley's delightful recollec- 
tions. At the age of twenty-two. McKinley's 
military career was over, and he again entered 
civil life in Ohio. He studied law in the 
office of Judge Glidden, and took a brief 
course at the Albany law school gaining ad- 
mittance to the bar in 1867. In the little 
town of Canton, then a place of 5,000 inhab- 
itants, the young attorney put out his shingle. 
I lis career at the bar was short, but brilliant. 
Before long years of experience could bring 
to him the full fruition of the lawyer's aspira- 
tions, he was called to public life by a demand 
of duty no less emphatic than that which had 
enlisted him in the war. Including his ser- 
vice as district attorney, he was only nine 
years in the prat tice of his profession before 
he was elected to the National House of 
Representatives, and that was the time when 
the modest narrative at the opening of this 
sketch was penned. 

During this period, in 1871, Major McKin- 
ley was married t<> Miss Ida Saxton. Their 
family life has been most sweet and ennobling. 



xvi Mckinley's masterpieces. 

Two little girls were born to them, who each 
in turn passed away. Since the birth of their 
second daughter, in 1873, Mrs. McKinley has 
never seen a well day, and that calamity, with 
the bereavement that came to them in the loss 
of their little ones, has again emphasized the 
truth that honour and fame cannot make good 
the loss of loved ones. Owing to her afflic- 
tion, Mrs. McKinley rarely goes out and does 
not give large receptions, or, in general, attend 
to those social requirements which high official 
position is supposed to entail. The mutual 
devotion of the rugged statesman and his frail 
companion is one of the most touching exam- 
ples of love and fidelity which the country 
affords. With tender care and unselfish 
solicitude Major McKinley guards his wife, 
and never gives expression to the slightest 
disappointment when a much cherished plan 
has to be put aside by reason of her infirmities. 
The twenty years of Major McKinley's 
public life have been full of achievements too 
well known to need description. They are a 
part of our country's history, which nothing 
can efface. In all the aspects of greatness as 
a legislator McKinley has conspicuously ex- 
celled. As a participant in the congressional 
debates, he has had, since the war period 
almost no equal ; in that judicious manage- 
ment of forces and planning of campaign 



UK GRAPHICAL SKETCH. XV11 

done in the committee-room, but so indispen- 
sable to the success of legislation, there has 
been but one McKinley. As a manager he is 
par excellence. Another of McKinley's re- 
markable traits of character is his untiring 
industry ; no detail that is related, however 
remotely, to large results, ever escapes his 
attention. l>y no accident of fatuitous cir- 
cumstance did he attain his great eminence 
in Congress, which led to his selection as 
chairman of the ways and means committee 
and majority leader on the lloor. Strict 
attention to duty, untiring study of all public 
questions, conscientious devotion to the in- 
terests of the people, and sterling patriotism 
were the elements that made his success in 
Congress. 

To summarize his achievements would be 
no light task. In the popular mind his name 
is enshrined with the great and beneficent 
principle of protection. This estimate is 
just and deserved, but it does not tell the 
whole truth. While McKinley is the greatest 
living champion of the doctrine of protection, 
he is in no sense a man of one idea. He is 
a grand all-around exponent of the principles 
of the Republican party, and not of any 
school or section of that magnificent organi- 
zation. McKinley is preeminent as a protec- 
tionist only because that doctrine is pre- 



wui m< kinlky's masterpieces. 

eminent among the tenets of Republicanism. 
But, back of any specific doctrine, he stands 
.squarely and strongly for the underlying prin- 
ciple of National Unity, in distinction from 
State Sovereignty, and for those corollaries in 
the philosophy of government which depend 
up«»n the inseparable union idea. To those 
battle-scarred veterans who made possible and 
enduring our national unity, he has always 
been a friend, and has invariably favored a 
generous pension policy, believing that the 
most which a grateful republic could do would 
be only tardy justice. On the vexed question 
of finance, McKinley now, and at all times, has 
typified Republicanism. He has always been 
unflinchingly for sound money, and at the 
same time has been friendly to silver, — a 
great American product, — and has striven 
to secure, through appropriate legislation, its 
largest possible use, consistent with the safe 
standards of Republican policy. Civil service 
reform lias found in him a warm friend, al- 
though he does not fail to recognize the fact 
that, in a large number of posts, those in sym- 
pathy with the administration in power can 
In- more efficient workers than those who are 
in opposition. For the rights of labor Mc- 
Kinley has always been a zealous champion. 
While in Congress he worked for the eight- 
hour law, and was one of the strongest advo- 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. XIX 

cates of the bill for the settlement, by arbitra^ 
tion, of controversies between interstate car- 
riers and their employees. 

Democratic trickery unexpectedly put an 
end to the congressional career of Mr. 
McKinley. That party, having secured pos- 
session of the Legislature of Ohio, so gerry- 
mandered the State that from McKinley's 
old district an angel from heaven could not 
have been elected as a Republican. This 
was in 1890 that, after a vigorous campaign 
and a stubborn fight, McKinley laid clown his 
arms before the omnipotence of the gerry- 
mander. But such methods did not long 
avail to check a great career. In 1891 he 
was nominated for Governor of Ohio. That 
was a year of great Democratic victories, and 
in the four doubtful States in which guberna- 
torial elections were held, in Ohio alone, and 
under the leadership of McKinley, were the 
Republicans successful. Flower was elected 
Governor of New York, Boies of Iowa, and 
Russell of Massachusetts. But even in a 
tidal wave year the Napoleon of protection 
was too much for the hosts of Democracy. 

Of McKinley's administration as Governor, 
too fresh in the public mind to permit more 
than a brief reference, one commendation is 
sufficiently striking to tell the story. After a 
brilliant campaign in 1891 he was elected 



X\ Mi kinley's masterpieces. 

- pernor by about 20,000, while after the 
people tried him two years in that new relation, 
his majority, after a spirited contest, was over 
80,000. As chief executive of the great 
( lommonwealth McKinley has shown a genius 
for administration quite as remarkable as he 
had previously shown in Congress as a legis- 
lator, or as a youth he had shown on the field 
of battle. Soldier, statesman, executive, man 
and orator of preeminent ability, rare integ- 
rity, genial and gentle manners, McKinley is 
an ideal of American citizenship, and one 
whose life is worthy of the closest study of all 
his fellow countrymen. 



MCKINLEY'S MASTERPIECES. 



CHAPTER I. 
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 

It is fitting that these selections should begin with 
quotations from the speeches of Major McKinley on 
the general topic — The Republican Party. To this 
great historic party he lias given a life of devoted 
service; it, in turn, has honored him to the full 
measure of possibility. 

I. Brief and to the Point. 

" My fellow citizens, let us cherish the prin- 
ciples of our party and consecrate ourselves 
anew to their triumph. We have but to put 
our trust in the people ; we have but to keep 
in close touch with the people ; we have but 
to hearken to the voice of the people, as it 
comes to us from every quarter ; we have but 
to paint on our banners the sentiment the 
people have everywhere expressed at every 
election during the last tbree years- ' Patri- 
otism, Protection and Prosperity,' to win an- 

21 






m< kinley's masterpieces. 



other most glorious and decisive Republican 
National victory." — Marquette Club, Chicago, 
Feb, 12, 1896. 

•• It is not our habit or our history as Re- 
publicans to haul down or lower our colors. 
We put them where they are. We mean to 
keep them there." — Columbus, O., June 8, 

V- 

"The past of the Republican party is se- 
cure, its glory fills the world with wonder and 
admiration, and inspires mankind with new 
hopes and grander aspirations. The future 
is now our field; let us look to it. It opens 
with glorious possibilities and invites the party 
of ideas to enter and possess it. Let us ap- 
peal to the highest judgment and reason of 
the people, and our appeal will not be in 
vain." -Dayton, O., Oct. 18,1887. 

"The Republican party stands for a for- 
eign policy dictated by and imbued with a 
spirit that is genuinely American ; for a policy 
that will revive the National traditions and 
restore the National spirit which carried us 
proudly through the earlier years of the cen- 
tury. It stands for such a policy with all 
foreign nations as will insure, both to us and 
them, justi< e, impartiality, fairness, good faith, 



THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 23 

dignity, and honor. It stands for the Monroe 
doctrine as Monroe himself proclaimed it, 
about which there is no division whatever 
among the American people. It stands now, 
as ever, for honest money and a chance to 
earn it by honest toil. It stands for a cur- 
rency of gold, silver, and paper with which to 
measure our exchanges, that shall be as sound 
as the Government and as untarnished as its 
honor." — Lincoln Banquet, Chicago^ Feb. 12, 
t8q6. 

" No one need be in any doubt about what 
the Republican party stands for. Its own 
history makes that too palpable and clear to 
admit of doubt. It stands for a reunited and 
recreated Nation, based upon free and honest 
elections in every township, county, city, district 
and State in this great American Union. It 
stands for the American fireside and the flag 
of the Nation. It stands for the American 
farm, the American factory, and the prosperity 
of all the American people. It stands for a 
reciprocity that reciprocates and which does 
not yield up to another country a single day's 
labor that belongs to the American working- 
man. It stands for international agreements, 
which get as much as they give, upon terms 
of mutual advantage. It stands for an ex- 
change of our surplus home products for such 



24 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

foreign products as we consume but do not 
produce. It stands for the reciprocity of 
iJlaine; for the reciprocity of Harrison; for 
the restoration and extension of the principle 
embodied in the reciprocity provision of the 
Republican tariff in 1890." — Lincoln Banquet, 
Chicago, Feb. 12, 1896. 

"Much as the Republican party has done, 
it has great things yet to do. It will be a 
mighty force in the future as it has been a 
mighty force in the past. Its glories will 
continue to blaze on the heights, a beacon to 
the world, pointing to a higher destiny for 
mankind, and the upholding and uplifting of 
a Nation approved of God It will not pause 
in its march and achievements until the Flag, 
the Flag of the Stars, shall be the unques- 
tioned symbol of sovereignty at home and 
of American rights abroad; until American 
labor shall be securely shielded from the 
degrading competition of the Old World, and 
our entire citizenship from the vicious and 
criminal classes who are crowding our shores ; 
never while the advocates of a debased dollar 
threaten the country with its financial heresies ; 
and never until the free right to vote in every 
< oraer of the country shall be protected under 
the law, and by the law, and for the law; 
never until the American ballot-box shall be 



THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 25 

held as sacred as the American home." — 
Niles, 0/iio, Gubernatorial Campaign^ Oct. 22, 

I&QI. 



II. " The Republican Party. It offers its past as 
a guarantee for its future." 

" Mr. President^ Gentlemen of the Michigan 

Republican Club : — It gives me .sincere pleasure 
to meet with you to-night I have not met 
with the Republicans of Michigan since the 
great victory of 1894 — the great national 
victory and I bring to you my congratula- 
tions upon the proud part you bore in that 
great conflict resulting so triumphantly for 
Republican principles, and. as I believe, for the 
best interests of the whole country. I cannot 
believe that our principles are less dear to us 
in their triumph than they were in their 
temporary defeat. I cannot believe that the 
principles which won a most unprecedented 
victory from ocean to ocean require now either 
modification or abandonment. They are 
dearer and closer to the American heart than 
they have ever been in the past, and notwith- 
standing the magnificent victory of 1894, and 
notwithstanding these great principles are 
cherished in the hearts of the American 
people, there is still a greater and more sig- 
nificant battle to be fought in the near future, 



Mckinley's masterpieces. 

before we can realize those principles in 
administration and legislation. 

•• While, in the situation of the country, there 
is no cause for congratulation, this is not the 
time to employ terms of distrust or aggrava- 
tion. Times are bad enough, and the voice 
of encouragement is more appropriate than 
that of alarm and exaggeration. The realities 
are quite ugly enough, and it is the duty of 
each of us, by word and act, in so far as it 
can be done, to improve the present condition. 
But above all, we must not disparage our 
government. We must uphold it, and uphold 
it at all times and under all circumstances, 
notwithstanding that we may not be able to 
support the measures and policies of the 
present administration. Home prosperity is 
the only key to an easy treasury and a high 
credit. The Republican party never lowered 
the flag or the credit of the Government, but 
lias exalted both. I agree with the President, 
in his recent message, that a predicament 

ironts us. When I was here six years ago, 
reading from his message, it was a condition 
that confronted us, and that condition was an 

rflowing treasury, under Republican legis- 
lation. Now I come back to you, and it is a 
predicament that confronts the people of the 
United States, because of a deficiency created 

the legislation of a Democratic Congress 
and administration. 



THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 27 

" I am sure, however, that there is wisdom 
and patriotism ample enough in the country 
to relieve ourselves from this or any other 
predicament, and to place us once more at the 
head of the nations of the world in credit, 
production, and prosperity. The Republican 
party needs but to adhere faithfully to its 
principles — to the principles enunciated by 
its great national conventions, which guided 
the republic for a third of a century in safety 
and honor, which gave the country an ade- 
quate revenue, and, while doing that, labor 
received comfortable wages and steady em- 
ployment, which guarded every American 
interest at home and abroad with zealous care 
— principles, the application of which made 
us a nation of homes, of independent, prosper- 
ous freemen, where all had a fair chance and 
an equal opportunity in the race of life. You 
do not have to guess what the Republican 
party will do. The whole world knows its 
purposes. It has embodied them in law, and 
executed them in administration. It has 
bravely met every emergency, and has ever 
measured up to every new duty. It is dedi- 
cated to the people ; it stands for the United 
States. It practises what it preaches, and 
fearlessly enforces what it teaches. Its simple 
code is home and country. Its central idea 
is the well-being of the people, and all the 



Mckinley's masterpieces. 

people. It has no aim which does not take 
into account the honor of the Government, 
and the material advancement and happiness 
of the American people. The Republican 
party is neither an apology nor a reminiscence. 
It is proud of its past, and it sees greater 
usefulness in the future." — Michigan Club, 
Feb. 22, iSgjj. 



CHAPTER II. 

J III. PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 

Wn ii the great principle of protection the name of 
McKinley will ever he associated. In no land and in 
no age has this great economic policy had an abler 
expounder than he. Wherever this beneficent princi- 
ple finds complete adoption, and its wisdom becomes 
demonstrated. M< Kinley's part in bringing about that 
prosperity and well-being of the social order which will 
inevitably result can nowhere be forgotten. He is 
the great philosopher of protection. To select from 
his voluminous expositions of thi.-. policy has been no 

3y task, but perhaps as representative a set of 
quotations as could be gathered is here found. < >ne 
selection is taken from his estimate of the Mills Bill, 
the great tarifl measure of the first Cleveland adminis- 
tration; while another comes from his speech on the 
Gorman tariff, the product of the second Cleveland 
administration. Another masterpiece is McKinley's 
discussion of the project for a tariff commission. It is 
here presented in part. "What protection means to 
Virginia" is an exposition of the effect of this eco- 
nomic philosophy, as applied to a particular locality; 
while McKinley's speech in presenting the tariff bill of 
1890 is perhaps his most formal analysis of the pro- 
tection plan, and from this masterpiece very generous 
extracts are here reproduced. 

I. Nuggets. 

"The protective system must stand, or fall, 
as a whole. As Burke said of liberty : 'It is 

29 



30 m< kinley's masterpieces. 

the clear right of all, or -of none. It is only 
pcifect when universal.' It must be a pro- 
tective tariff for all interests requiring the 
encouragement of the Government, or it must 
be free trade or a revenue tariff and rest 
alike upon all classes and all portions of the 
country." -Address at Atlanta, Ga., Aug. 21, 
H. 

" We are faithfully wedded to the great 
principle of protection by every tie of party 
fealty and affection, and it is dearer to us 
now than ever before. Not only is it dearer 
to us as Republicans, but it has more devoted 
supporters among the great masses of the 
American people, irrespective of party, than 
at any previous period in our National his- 
tory. It is everywhere recognized and en- 
dorsed as the great, masterful, triumphant 
American principle — the key to our pros- 
perity in business, the safest prop to the 
Treasury of the United States, and the bul- 
wark of our national independence and finan- 
1 ial honor. The question of the continuance 
or abandonment of our protective system has 
n the one great, overshadowing, vital ques- 
tion in American politics ever since Mr. Cleve- 
land opened the contest in December, 1887, to 
which the lamented James G. Blaine made 
swift reply from across the sea, and it will 



THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 3 I 

continue the issue until a truly American 
policy, for the good of America, is firmly 
established and perpetuated. The fight will 
go on- -and must go on — until the American 
system is everywhere recognized, until all 
nations come to understand and respect it as 
distinctly, and all Americans come to honor 
or love it as dearly, as they do the American 
flag. God grant the day may soon come 
when all partizan contention over it is forever 
at an end."- — Lincoln Banquet, Marquette Club, 
Chicago, Feb. 12, i8g6. 

" I believe that it is the duty of American 
Congressmen to legislate for American citi- 
zens, and not for foreign manufacturers. Let 
us take care of our own interests, and look to 
the well-being of our own citizens first." — 
Speech on Tariff of 188 j. 

"Hamilton and Madison, Jefferson ami 
Calhoun, Clay and Webster, ami Adams and 
Jackson always asserted and maintained the 
constitutionality of protection. Is Cleveland 
a better constitutional lawyer than Jefferson? 
Is Vilas more learned than Madison ? Wat- 
terson more profound than Clay? 1 Adlai 
Stevenson a better expounder of the Consti- 
tution than Andrew Jackson ? Are all of them 
combined safer interpreters of that great 



32 Mckinley s masterpieces. 

instrument than the Supreme Court of the 
United States, which has never failed, when 
called upon, to sustain the constitutionality of 
a protective tariff. If it is in violation of any 
constitution, it is not that of the United 
States. It is a manifest violation of the Con- 
stitution of the Confederate States. Possibly, 
that is what they mean." At Beatrice, Ne- 
braska, August 2, i8g2. 

"Home competition will always bring prices 
to a fair and reasonable level, and prevent 
extortion and robbery. Success, or even 
apparent success, in any business or enter- 
prise, will incite others to engage in like en- 
terprises, and then follows healthful strife, the 
life of business, which inevitably results in 
cheapening the article produced."— Speech in 
Congress on Wool lar iff Bill, i8y8. 

" With me, protection is a deep conviction, 
not a theory. I believe in it, and thus warmly 
advocate it, because enveloped in it are my 
country's highest development and greatest 
prosperity ; out of it come the greatest gains 
to the people, the greatest comforts to the 
masses, the widest encouragement for manly 
aspirations, with the best and largest rewards 
for honest efforts dignifying and elevating 
our citizenship, upon which the safety, the 



I UK PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 33 

purity, and permanency of our political sys- 
stem depend." -Fifty-first Congress, May 7, 
iSgo. 

"Protection builds up; a revenue tariff 
tears down. 1'rotcction brings hope and cour- 
age to heart and heme: free trade drives 
them from both. Free trade levels down; 
protection levels up." mvention <>/ Repub- 
lican College Clubs, .lun Arbor, Midi., May 
17 > l8Q2. 

" Our philosophy includes the grower ol the 
wool, the weaver ol the fabric, the seamstress, 
and the tailor. Tariff reformers have no 
thought of these toilers. They can bear their 
hard t.isks in pun hin- poverty tor the .sake ol 
cheap coats, which prove by tar tin- dearest 
when measured by sweat and toil. The tai 
in reformers concern themselves only about 

(heap coats and cheap .shoes. We do not 
overlook the comfort of those who make the 
coats and make the shoes, and will provide 
the wool and the cloth, the hides and the 
leather.'" /// reply to Mr. Cleveland, Toledo, 
Ohio, Feb. 12, t8qi. 

"The farmer is best oft" with a home mar- 
ket. The fanner himself knows this, and no 
amount of rhetoric can deceive him. The 



34 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

fathers of the republic saw it and proclaimed 
it. We can only have a profitable home mar- 
ket by encouraging manufacturing industries. 
k Plant the forge by the farm," is the old doc- 
trine, and it is as true now as it was when 
uttered." — Speech on Morrison Tariff Bill, 
House of Representatives, April jo, 1884. 

II. On the Mills Bill. 

" What is a protective tariff ? It is a tariff 
upon foreign imports so adjusted as to secure 
the necessary revenue, and judiciously im- 
posed upon those foreign products the like 
of which are produced at home or the like of 
which we are capable of producing at home, 
it imposes the duty upon the competing for- 
eign product ; it makes it bear the burden 
or duty, and, as far as possible, luxuries only 
excepted, permits the non- competing foreign 
product to come in free of duty. Articles of 
common use, comfort and necessity, which 
we cannot produce here, it sends to the people 
untaxed and free from custom-house exac- 
tions. Tea, coffee, spices, and drugs are 
such articles, and under our system are upon 
the free list. It says to our foreign com- 
petitor, if you want to bring your merchandise 
here, your farm products here, your coal and 
iron ore, your wool, your salt, your pottery, 
your glass, your cottons and woolens, and sell 



THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 35 

alongside of our producers in our markets, we 
will make your product bear a duty ; in effect, 
pay for the privilege of doing it. 

kk Our kind of tariff makes the competing 
foreign article carry the burden, draw the 
load, supply the revenue ; and in performing 
this essential office it encourages at the same 
time our own industries and protects our 
own people in their chosen employments. 
That is the mission and purpose of a protect- 
ive tariff. That is what we mean to maintain, 
and any measure which will destroy it we shall 
firmly resist; and if beaten on this floor, we 
will appeal from your decision to the people, 
before whom parties and policies must at last 
be tried. We have free trade among our- 
selves throughout thirty-eight States and the 
Territories and among sixty millions of people. 
Absolute freedom of exchange within our 
own borders and among our own citizens is 
the law of the Republic. Reasonable taxation 
and restraint upon those without is the dic- 
tate of enlightened patriotism and the doc- 
trine of the Republican party." — House of 
Representatives, May 18, 1888. 

III. The Gorman Tariff. 

" Mr. President and My Fellow Citizens : — I 
recall with emotion my last visit to your city. 



M< kinley's masterpieces. 

It was in the political campaign of 1884, 
when the great leader and statesman of the 
State of Maine, the beloved by all the country, 
was the presidential candidate of the Repub- 
lican party. He was a leader around whom 
all Ohio Republicans were proud to rally, and 
to whom they gave a warm, earnest, and cheer- 
ful support. He lost the presidency, but could 
not be deprived of a place in history which 
that great office, exalted as it is, could not 
have brightened, and failure to secure which 
could not blast. 

" For, more and better than all else, he has 
a place in the hearts of the people, as ten- 
der and affectionate as that of almost any 
other American statesman living or dead." 

•• For eighteen months, my fellow citizens, 
the Democratic President and Democratic 
( longress have been running the Government, 
during which time little else has been run- 
ning. Industry has been practically stopped. 
Labor has found little employment, and when 
employed it has been at greatly reduced 
wag< Both Government and people have 

n draining their reserves, and both have 
been running in debt. The Government has 
suffered in its revenues and the people in 
their incomi The total losses to the coun- 
in business, property, and wages are be- 

nd human calculation. There has been no 



THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 37 

cessation in the waste of wealth and wages; 
no contentment, brightness or hope has any- 
where appeared. Discontent and distress have 
been universal. The appeals to charity have 
never been so numerous and incessant, nor 
their necessity everywhere so manifest. 

" Congress has disappointed the people, 
trifled with the sacred trust confided to it, ex- 
cited distrust and disgust among their constit- 
uents and impaired their enterprises and invest- 
ments. In almost continuous session for thir- 
teen months they have done nothing but 
aggravate the situation. Pledged, if plat- 
forms mean anything, to overthrow our long 
continued policy of protection, they have 
quarreled and compromised, and, upon their 
own testimony, have been compromised. 

" The result of their long wrangle is a tar- 
iff law with which nobody is satisfied. 

" A law which even those who made it apol- 
ogize for. 

" A law which the chairman of the Com- 
mittee on Ways and Means and almost the 
entire Democratic side of the House con- 
demned by a yea and nay vote only a few 
days before its passage, affirming their inten- 
tion in the most solemn manner not to permit 
it to be enacted. 

" A law which was never approved by a 
majority of either the House Committee on 



Mi kinley's masterpieces. 

Ways and Means or the Senate Committee of 
Finance, who were charged with the prepara- 
tion and management of the bill. 

•• A law which all factions of the Democratic 
party agree is the work of a monstrous trust, 
which Chairman Wilson confessed, amid the 
applause of his confederates, with deep cha- 
grin and humiliation, ' held Congress by the 
throat.' 

"The history of the new tariff legislation 
is interesting and instructive. The House, 
which alone has the power to originate rev- 
enue bills, passed what is known as the Wil- 
son bill, a measure which has the unenviable 
distinction of being the only tariff bill in our 
history that was ever indorsed by a President 
in his annual message to Congress before it 
had been reported to the House, and before 
it had ever been officially adopted by the 
Ways and Means Committee. It was osten- 
sibly a tariff bill for revenue, and yet on its 
face it did not raise sufficient revenue to 
conduct tin- Cox-eminent. If that bill had 
become a law. every estimate I have seen 
touching its revenue- raising power created 
an annua] deficiency of from $40,000,000 to 
00,000. 
The bill went to the Senate and took the 
usual course of reference to the Committee 
on Finance, which is, barged with the revenue 



THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 39 

legislation of the Senate. After long consid- 
eration by the committee, the Wilson bill, with 
more than four hundred amendments, was re- 
ported to the Senate. But after much talking 
and wrangling it was soon made manifest that 
neither the Wilson bill, nor the Wilson bill 
with the Finance Committee's amendments 
could pass that body. 

" And so, taking the matter out of the 
hands of the Senate and out of the hands of 
the Finance Committee of the Senate, a self- 
constituted Adjusting Committee, — a commit- 
tee unknown to the Constitution, a committee 
unauthorized by the rules of the Senate or 
by party caucus or custom, — an Adjusting 
Committee, consisting of Messrs. Jones of 
Arkansas, Vest of Missouri, and Harris of 
Tennessee, undertook to make a bill which 
would receive the votes of forty -three Sen- 
ators or a bare majority of all. 

" The Democratic party is a most remark- 
able party. They are for anything to get 
power, but they are never for anything which 
got them power. 

"They were for free raw materials in the 
campaign of 1892. But they were opposed 
to free raw materials after the campaign was 
successful, and when they possessed the 
power to make them free. 

" They were vociferously opposed to trusts 



KINLEY's MASTERPIECE-. 

in their platform and on the stump when they 

e trying to £et back into office. But it is 

ied that they became the willing tools 

and advocates of trusts when opportunity 

came to strike the blow against them. 

• I'hcy posed as the true and only friends 
of labor during the summer and fall of 1892. 
and even pointed to the Homestead riots as 
the direct and logical fruits of Republican 
g - uion. But since that time they have 
indicted upon American labor the deadliest 
blow it has received. Their policy had re- 
duced wages and beggared labor beyond 
-cription. 
1 hey promised the farmer better prices 
his wheat and wool when thev were seeking 
vote. But when they once obtained his 
sur g .heir economic policy began to force 
down the prices daily until it has now reached 
the 1 - point known for nearly fiftv 

disappointed even- reasc lable 

they raised in the campaign of 

but justified even- fear or evil prediction 

them. They have ignored even 

I hey have disregarded every obi iga- 

"• ken faith with a trusting 

; sed their insincerity and 

They appear before the 

pie to-day totally discredited 



THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 4 1 

and in disgrace, upon their own confessions, 
before the close of half of the presidential 
tenn. They have utterly failed to redeem any 
pledge made to the people, and after more than 
a year's continuous session of Congress are 
forced to acknowledge their infirmity, imbe- 
cility, and the lack of united purpose to carry 
out any single one of the great promises of the 
campaign. They have exhibited their inherent 
weakness and have disclosed irreconcilable 
differences with the party. 

" The Senate does not agree with the House, 
nor the House with the Senate, nor either with 
itself or the President, while the great body 
of the people is decidedly at variance with all 
of them. 

" Under such anomalous circumstances, is 
it any wonder that President Cleveland, in 
his letter to Chairman Wilson, should have 
mournfullv exclaimed : 

J 

- ' There is no excuse for mistaking or mis- 
apprehending the feeling and the temper of 
the rank and file of the Democracy. They 
are downcast under the assertion that their 
party fails in ability to manage the Govern- 
ment, and they are apprehensive that efforts 
to brins; about tariff reform may fail ; but 
they are much more downcast and apprehen- 
sive in their fear that Democratic principles 
may be surrendered.' 



i_. Mckinley's masterpieces. 

"No party can be safely trusted with the 

red interests of the people or the Govern- 
ment, without it possesses a fixed, honest, and 
enlightened purpose. Singleness of purpose 
is i: uv to every reform, indispensable to 

wise administration and legislation. The want 

this quality is the infirmity of the present 
Administration and the present Congress. 

• Failure and disappointment were bound to 
follow an Administration and Congress thus 
chosen, and the whole country suffers as a 
result. Tiie Administration and Congress are 
without compass or rudder. They have at 
length passed a tariff law, such as it is, but 
if we credit Democratic testimony alone the 

►pie burn with impatience for an oppor- 
tunity to repudiate both it and them. 

•• We could bear with resignation their party 
differences and demoralization if the Demo- 

:i< party was the sole sufferer. But when 

ntemplate the widespread ruin to busi- 

nd enterprise, and employment, we ap- 

the dreadful sacrifice which this 

Administration has entailed, and the appalling 

' keofi Bangor, Me., Sept. 8, 1894. 



IV. The Tariff Commission. 

'I he tariff question has again forced itself 
• promineno While it lias never ceased 



THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 43 

to be a question upon which the political 
parties of the country have made some declar- 
ation, yet for many years other issues have in 
a great measure determined party divisions 
and controlled party discipline. The last 
presidential campaign brought recognition 
and discussion of this issue, and it may be 
fairly said that Republican advocacy of the 
protective principle contributed in no small 
degree to the success of the Republican 
national ticket. It can safely be asserted 
that the doctrine of a tariff for revenue and 
protection as against a tariff for revenue only 
is the dominant sentiment in the United 
States to-day ; and if a vote upon that issue, 
with every other question eliminated, could be 
had, the majority would not only be large, but 
surprisingly large, for the protective principle. 
" The Democratic majorities in the Forty- 
fourth, Forty-fifth, and Forty-sixth Congresses, 
although committed by party utterances and 
by platforms as well as the pledges of leaders 
to a reduction of duties to a revenue basis, 
were unable, with all their party machinery 
and the free use of the party lash, to advance 
even a step in that direction. Every proposi- 
tion for a change was met with the almost 
solid opposition of this side of the House, 
which, with the assistance of a few Repre- 
sentatives on the other side from Pennsyl- 



}) McKINLEYS MASTERPIECES. 

vania and the New England States, was 
strong enough to insure, and did insure, the 
substantial defeat of every measure looking to 
a disturbance of the existing tariff rates. 

" Much criticism is indulged in by the 
I democratic party upon the enormities of our 
tariff, and yet with those years of power, in 
absolute control of the House, and a part of 
that time controlling the Senate as well, noth- 
ing was accomplished by way of removing the 
so-called enormities, and at last the party was 
compelled to confess that it was unable to 
make any progress in that direction. 

'This is some evidence at least of the 
domination in this country of the protective 
idea, or else it demonstrates the infidelity of 
the Democratic party to its professed princi- 
ples ; one or the other. I prefer to interpret 
the former as its meaning. The sentiment is 
m. rely growing. It has friends to-day that it 
never had in the past. Its adherents are no 
'">'- >n!ined to the North and the East, 

but are found in the South and in the West.' 
Hie idea travels with industry, and is the 
late of enterprise and thrift. It encour- 
the development of skill, labor, and 
•".us as part of the great produc- 
"e forces. Its advocacy is no longer limited 

'"• manufacturer, but it has friends the 
devote d among the farmers, the wool 



THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 45 

growers, the laborers, and the producers of 
the land. It is as strong in the country as in 
the manufacturing towns or the cities ; and 
while it is not taught generally in our col- 
leges, and our young men fresh from univer- 
sities join with the free-trade thought of the 
country, practical business and every-day ex- 
perience later teach them that there are other 
sources of knowledge besides books, that 
demonstration is better than theory, and that 
actual results outweigh an idle philosophy. 
But, while it is not favored in the colleges, 
it is taught in the school of experience, in the 
workshop, where honest men perform an 
honest day's labor, and where capital seeks 
the development of national wealth. It is, in 
my judgment, fixed in our national policy, 
and no party is strong enough to overthrow 
it. 

" It has become a part of our system, inter- 
woven with our business enterprises every- 
where, and is to-day better entitled to be 
called ' the American system ' than it was in 
1824, when Henry Clay christened it with 
that designation. Fixed as I believe the 
principle is, the details of an equitable and 
equal adjustment of the schedule of duties, 
recognizing fully this idea, fair to all interests, 
is the work of this House, either through its 
appropriate committee, or calling to its aid 



\1< KIM INS MASTERPIECES. 

primarily a commission of experts, as pro- 
posed by the bill now under consideration. 
My own preference would be that Congress 
should do this work, and delegate no part of 
it to commissions or committees unknown in 
this body. This, however, is a matter of 
personal judgment, about which men equally 
intelligent and honest, equally devoted to 
protection, may differ. 

11 1 can not refrain from saying that we are 
taking a new and somewhat hazardous step 
in delegating a duty that we ought our- 
selves to perform — a duty confided to us by 
the Constitution, and to no others. It is true 
that a commission does not legislate, and, 
therefore, its work may or may not be adopted 
by Congress. This is the safety of the 
►position. The information it will furnish 
will be important, and its statistics of rare 
value, but the same sources of information 
are open to Congress and to the Committee 
on Ways and Means as will be available to 
ommission ; and as the former will ulti- 
mately have to deal with the question practi- 
cally in Congress, it has seemed to me, if 
that committee were willing to undertake the 
task and had the requisite time to perform it, 
h would be the wisest and most certain 
■ to the accomplishment of results de- 

red by all. 



THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 47 

" The argument that the proposition for a 
commission is the suggestion of the protec- 
tionists, to secure delay and to postpone 
present action upon the tariff, comes with bad 
grace from the party upon the other side of 
this House. It wasted six years and secured 
no revision of the tariff. It refused, in the 
Forty -sixth Congress, to pass the Eaton bill 
for a tariff commission, which required the 
report to be made on the first of January 
last, and which, if they had acted upon it 
during the closing session of the Forty-sixth 
Congress, the work of the commission would 
now have been in the possession of Congress 
for immediate consideration and practical 
action. My friend from Kentucky [Mr. 
Turner], in his speech of March 8, 1882, 
said : 

"' I regard it [a commission] like an affidavit filed in 
a criminal case, merely for the continuance of a bad 
cause.' 

" If a bad cause, why did not your party 
abate it when you were in power? If it is 
an affidavit for a continuance, I beg to remind 
the gentleman that it was his party which 
prepared and filed it nearly two years ago, 
when it had the House and the Senate, and 
could have disposed of it according to its 
own liking. Senator Eaton, a distinguished 



m« kinley's masterpieces. 

Democrat, high in the councils of his party, 
presented the original bill, and for many 
months it was on the Speaker's desk of a 
Democratic House, where it was left undis- 
posed of, insuring still further postponement. 
The Democratic party, and no other, is re- 
sponsible for the delay, and I charge any 
injury which delay has produced upon it. 

" Mr. Chairman, the wages question as 
related to the tariff is well illustrated by the 
following from the Rice Association of 
>rgia: 

•• In the period between 1840 and i860 the duty on 

ign rice was absolutely needless as a protection to 

the American producer, and valueless as a source of 

nue to the Government. The farmer was wholly 

independent of protection to an industry maintained 

laboi in cheapness second to that of Asia only, 
and in effectiveness unsurpassed. By reason of that 
• heap labor he was in a position to defy competition, 
and triumphantly met the almost free importation of 

t India rice, even in the English markets.' 

•• The per diem of slave labor at that time did 
not much, if at all, exceed twenty cents. 

'This fact is the best argument that can 
be made, and needs no elaboration. It tells 
the whole story. With slave labor at twenty 
< enl day. or Asiatic cheap labor, we need 

if protection, and save for the purposes of 
ie our custom-houses might be closed. 



THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 49 

When the South depended upon the labor of 
its slaves, and employed little or no free labor, 
it was as earnest an advocate of free trade as 
is England to-day. Now that it must resort 
to free labor, it is placed upon the same foot- 
ing as Northern producers ; it is compelled to 
pay a like rate of wages for a day's work, and 
therefore demands protection against the 
foreign producer, whose product is made or 
grown by a cheaper labor. And we find all 
through the South a demand for protection to 
American industry against a foreign compe- 
tition, bent upon their destruction and deter- 
mined to possess the American market. 

" But our laboring men are not content with 
the hedger's and ditcher's rate of pay. No 
worthy American wants to reduce the price 
of labor in the United States. It ought not 
to be reduced ; for the sake of the laborer and 
his family and the good of society it ought to 
be maintained. To increase it would be 
in better harmony with the public sense. 
Our labor must not be debased, nor our labor- 
ers degraded to the level of slaves, nor any 
pauper or servile system in any form, nor 
under any guise whatsoever, at home or 
abroad. Our civilization will not permit it. 
Our humanity forbids it. Our traditions are 
opposed to it. The stability of our institu- 
tions rests upon the contentment and intelli- 



M< kinley's masterpieces. 

gence of all our people, and these can only 
possessed by maintaining the dignity of 
labor and securing to it its just rewards. 
That protection opens new avenues for em- 
ployment, broadens and diversifies the field 
of labor, and presents variety of vocation, is 
manifest from our own experience. 

" Free trade may be suitable to Great Brit- 
tain and its peculiar social and political struc- 
ture, but it has no place in this Republic, 
where classes are unknown and where caste 
has long since been banished ; where equality 
is the rule ; where labor is dignified and hon- 
orable ; where education and improvement 
arc the individual striving of every citizen, 
no matter what may be the accident of his 
birth or the poverty of his early surroundings. 
Here the mechanic of to-day is the manufac- 
turer of a few years hence. Under such con- 
ditions, free trade can have no abiding -place 
hei We are doing very well; no other 
nation has done better, or makes a better 
showing in the world's balance-sheet. We 
ought to be satisfied with the progress thus 
far made, and contented with our outlook for 
the future. We know what we have done and 
what we can do under the policy of protec- 
tion. We have had some experience with a 
enue tariff, which neither inspires hope, 
n.. r courage, nor confidence. Our own his- 



THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 5 I 

tory condemns the policy we oppose, and is 
the best vindication of the policy which we 
advocate. It needs no other. It furnished 
us in part the money to prosecute the war for 
the Union to a successful termination ; it has 
assisted largely in furnishing the revenue to 
meet our great public expenditures and dimin 
ish with unparalleled rapidity our great na- 
tional debt ; it has contributed in securing 
to us an unexampled credit ; it has developed 
the resources of the country and quickened 
the energies of our people ; it has made us 
what the nation should be, independent and 
self - reliant ; it has made us industrious in 
peace, and secured us independence in war; 
and we find ourselves in the beginning of the 
second century of the Republic without a 
superior in industrial arts, without an equal in 
commercial prosperity, with a sound financial 
system, with an overflowing treasury, blessed 
at home and at peace with all mankind. Shall 
we reverse the policy which has rewarded us 
with such magnificent results ? Shall we aban- 
don the policy which, pursued for twenty 
years, has produced such unparalleled growth 
and prosperity ? 

" No, no. Let us, Mr. Chairman, pass this 
bill. The creation of a commission will give 
no alarm to business, will menace no industry 
in the United States. Whatever of good it 



M( kinley's masterpieces. 

brings to us on the first Monday in December 
next we can accept; all else we can and will 
reject." House of Representatives, April 6, 



V What Protection Means to Virginia. 

•• J/i Fellow Citizens : — I come to your State 
upon the invitation of the Chairman of the 
Republican State Committee, to talk to you 
about the country and its condition, and the 
relation of the two political parties to our 
present and future. I do not come to tell you 
the splendid story of the Republican party in 
the past, for with that you are all familiar. I 
come rather to talk to you of the future, of 
that which concerns your labor, your material 
int. . and your individual as well as the 

general prosperity. I come to say in Virginia 

i isely what I have said in Ohio, for there 

me thing that can always be said about the 
Republican party- - it is a national party. It 
advocates the same principles in Ohio and 
Massachusetts, in New York and New Jersey, 
that it advocates in Virginia, Mississippi, and 

rth and South Carolina; for wherever you 

find Republicans, whether it is in one of the 

of the North, or in one of the States 

ol the South, you find them always standing 

ii the same platform, always carrying the 



THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 53 

same flag, always in favor of national unity 
and national prosperity. 

" A great question, my fellow citizens, be- 
fore this country — a question of the now and 
a question of the hereafter — is whether we 
shall have maintained in the United States a 
system of protection to American labor and 
American development, or whether we shall 
have practical free trade with all the countries 
of the world, and impose no duties except for 
revenue upon articles of merchandise, and 
products that may be brought into the United 
States. No, we want no free trade. First of 
all, we want to know which party, if any, is in 
favor of free trade ? And which party is in 
favor of a protective tariff ? You say that the 
Democratic party is in favor of free trade, and 
the Republican party in favor of protection. 
But there are a good many Democrats who 
say they are in favor of protection. There 
are two ways of determining the position of a 
political party : one is by its platforms, the 
other is by its record and its votes in the 
Congress of the United States. 

" Let us try the Democratic and Republican 
parties by this test for a moment, because I 
would not do the Democratic party any injus- 
tice upon this subject if I could ; and I assert 
here to-night, and I challenge contradiction by 
any gentleman in this audience, or elsewhere, 



M< KIM l.\ 'S MASTERPIECES. 

that since 1840, and before, with just two 
eptions, the Democratic party of the 
United States in national conventions and in 
national platforms, from 1840 to 1884, has 
declared in favor of a revenue tariff closely 
approximating free trade. They did it in 
[840, they did it in 1844, they did it in 1848, 
they did it in 1852, they did it in 1856, they did it 
in [860, and again in 1868, with a suggestion of 
'incidental protection,' and they omitted it in 
\ and 1872. And why did they omit it? 
They omitted it in 1872, because in that year the 
Democratic party nominated for its presiden- 
tial candidate the old Republican leader, 
Horace Greeley, who had taught the younger 
nun of this country the great doctrine of 
American protection, and they did not, there- 
fore, that year dare to declare in favor of free 
de with a protectionist standing on their 
platform. 

•• Now, my fellow citizens, what is this tar- 
It is very largely misunderstood, or, 
rather, it is very little understood, and, if I 
< an to-night make this audience, the humblest 
ind the youngest in it, understand what the 
tariff means, I will feel that I have been well 
paid foi my trip to Virginia. What then is 
The tariff, my fellow citizens, is a 
put upon goods made outside of the 
ited Stales, and broughl into the United 



THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 55 

States for sale and consumption. That is, 
we say to England, we say to Germany, we 
say to France, ' If you want to sell your goods 
to the people of the United States, you must 
pay so much for the privilege of doing it ; you 
must pay so much per ton, so much per yard, 
so much per foot, as the case may be, for the 
privilege of selling to the American people, 
and what you pay in that form, goes into the 
public treasury to help discharge the public 
burdens.' It is just like the little city of 
Petersburg, for example. I do not know 
what your customs may be, but in many cities 
of the North, if a man comes to our cities and 
wants to sell goods to our people on the 
street, not to occupy any of our business 
houses, not being a permanent resident or 
trader, not living there, but travelling and 
selling from town to town, if he comes to one 
of our little cities in Ohio, we say to him : 
' Sir, you must pay so much into the city 
treasury for the privilege of selling goods to 
our people here.' Now, why do we do that ? 
We do it to protect our own merchants. 

" Just so our Government says to the coun- 
tries of the Old World ; it says to England 
and the rest: 'If you want to come in and 
sell to our people, you must pay something 
for the privilege of doing it, and pay it at the 
Treasury and at the custom-houses,' and that 



Mckinley's masterpieces. 

s into the Treasury of the United States 
to lulp discharge the public debt and pay the 
current expenses of the Government. Now, 
that is the tariff, and if any man at this point 
wants to ask me any questions about it, I 
want him to do it now, for I don't want, when 
1 .mi -one, to have some Democrat say, 'If I 
could only have had an opportunity to ask 
him a question, I would like to have done it, 

ause I could have exposed the fallacy of 
his argument.' So I want him to do it now. 

" 1 said to the people of Ohio, when we 
were making our canvass this year, ' Elect 
a Republican Legislature, so that we may 
send John Sherman back to the Senate of the 
United States, and thereby preserve a Re- 
publican majority in that great parliamentary 
body.' And I say to the citizens of Virginia, 
1 do not care what your politics are, I do not 
« are where you stood during the great Civil 
War, -if you are interested in the develop- 
ment of a new and progressive order of things 
in Virginia,— I say to you, as I said to the 
people of ( >hio, ' Elect a Legislature that will 
send to the Senate of the United States a 
man who will vote for a protective tariff,' and 
who has done it over and over again, and if 
you do that, the Republican party will pre- 
serve its majority in that great body, which is 
the only Republican citadel we have left. 



THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 57 

The House is Democratic; the President is 
Democratic, or they think he is. They 
thought he was, but I do not know how he 
is going to turn out. They have the House 
and the President, and if General Mahone is 
defeated in Virginia, I do not know that it is 
possible for the Republicans to preserve the 
Senate during the entire administration of 
Grover Cleveland. 

" Now, my fellow citizens, a little more 
about the tariff. It is a very dry subject, 
but it is a subject which affects your purse, 
your dress, your living, and your homes; it 
affects your every -day interests, and your 
ability to live in comfort, and to keep your 
family from want. 

" Why, they call me a high protectionist ; 
I am a high protectionist; I do not deny 
it, and I would not be seriously disturbed 
in mind if the tariff were a little higher. 
Do you know of any reason in the world 
why Americans should not make every- 
thing that Americans need? There is, in- 
deed, no reason. We have the capital ; we 
have the skill; we have all the elements of 
Nature ; we have everything we need, and I 
would make the duty so high that there would 
be fewer English goods coming into the 
United States and more American goods con- 
sumed at home. Do you think there would 



M< kinley's masterpieces. 

an idle man in America if we manufactured 
everything that Americans used ? Do you 
think if we did n't buy anything from abroad 
at all, but made everything we needed, that 
every man would not be employed in the 
United States, and employed at a profitable 
remuneration? Why, everybody is benefited 
by protection, even the people who do not 
believe in it --for they get great benefit out 
of it, but will not confess it; and that is what 
i^ the matter with Virginia. Heretofore, she 
lias not believed in it. You have not had a 
public man that I know of in Washington for 
twenty-five years, save one, except the Repub- 
lieans, who did not vote against the great 
doctrine of American protection, American 
industries, and American labor ; and do you 
imagine that anybody is coming to Virginia 
with his money to build a mill, or a factory, or 
a furnace, and develop your coal and your ore, 
bring his money down here, when you vote 
ry time against his interests — and don't 
let those who favor them vote at all? No. 
If you think so, you might just as well be un- 
deceived now, for they will not come. 

"Why. old John Randolph, I don't know 

how many years ago, said on the floor of the 

American Congress, in opposing a protective 

tariff, * he did not believe in manufactories.' 

Why,' -;ii>l he. -it you have manufactories in 



THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 59 

Philadelphia, you will have cholera six months 
in the year.' That was what the ' Sage of 
Roanoke ' said, and Virginia seems to be still 
following the sentiments he uttered years and 
years ago. 

" I tell you, manufactories do not bring 
cholera --they bring coin, coin; coin for the 
poor man, coin for the rich, coin for every- 
body who will work, comfort and contentment 
for all deserving people. And, if you vote 
for increasing manufactories, my fellow citi- 
zens, you will vote for the best interests of 
your own State, and you will be making iron, 
and steel, and pottery, and all the great leading 
products, just as Ohio and Pennsylvania are 
making them to-day. 

"Tell me why your land in Virginia, in 
1880, was worth an average price of but 
$10.92 all over the State, while over in Penn- 
sylvania the average price per acre was $49. 
Virginia has just as good soil as Pennsyl- 
vania. Virginia has just as rich minerals as 
Pennsylvania, and what makes the difference 
between the $11 and $49 is, that you have 
little development in Virginia-- and your old 
policy will never bring more. 

" Stand by your interests - - stand by the 
party that stands by the people. Because in 
the Republican party there is no such thing 
as class or caste. The humble, poor colored 



60 m< kinley's masterpipxes. 

man in the Republican party, the humble, 
poor white man in the Republican party, has 
an equal chance with the opulent white or 
colored Republican in the race of life. And 
so with every race, and every nationality, the 
Republican party says, 'Come up higher!' 
We do not appeal to passions ; we do not 
appeal to baser instincts; we do not appeal 
to race or war prejudices. We do appeal to 
your consciences ; we do appeal to your own 

; interests, to stand by a party that stands 
by the people. Vote the Republican ticket, 
stand by the protective policy, stand by 
American industries, stand by that policy 
which believes in American work for Ameri- 
i an workmen, that believes in American 
wages for American laborers, that believes 
in American homes • for American citizens. 
Vote to maintain that system by which you 
( an earn enough not only to give you the 
comforts of life, but the refinements of life; 
enough to educate and equip your children, 
who may not have been fortunate by birth, 
who may not have been born with a silver 
spoon in their mouths; enough to enable 
il 'fin in turn to educate and prepare their 
< hildivn for the great possibilities of Ameri- 
can lltr - • am for America, because America 

foi the common people. We have no 
kings, we have no dukes, we have no lords. 



THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 6 1 

Every man in this country represents the 
sovereign power of this great Government, 
and every man has equal power with every 
other man to clothe that sovereign with his 
will. I believe in America, because we have 
no laws in this country like the old laws of 
primogeniture, where everything goes to the 
first-born ; and I like this country for another 
thing : When the rich man dies he cannot en- 
tail his property. Often the boy he leaves 
behind him, reared in luxury and wealth, if 
raised to do nothing, can not take care of the 
property left him. I will tell you how it is 
up in our country, and I want it so down here 
in Virginia. In less than twenty-five years 
the son of a poor man has a part of the 
wealth which the opulent ancestor left that 
will not stay with his unworthy descendant. 
And so everybody gets a chance after a while. 
The wealthy men of our country to-day were 
poor men forty years ago, and the future man- 
ufacturers are the mechanics of the present. 
Make that possible in Virginia, and you will 
win. Make it possible to break down the 
prejudices of the past. Get out from under 
your ancestral tree. Recognize and give 
force to the Constitution, permit every man 
to vote for the party of his choice, and have 
his ballot honestly counted. Push to the front 
where you belong as a State and a people. 



Mi kinley's masterpieces. 

•• Be assured that the Republicans of the 
North harbor no resentments — only ask for 
the results of the war. They wish you the 
highest prosperity and greatest development. 
They bid you, in the language of Whittier: 

• • • \ schoolhouse plant on every hill 

Stretching in radiate nerve-lines thence, 

The quick wires of intelligence; 

Till North and South together brought 

Shall own the same electric thought ; 

In peace a common flag salute, 

And, side by side in labor's free 

And unresentful rivalry, 

Harvest the fields wherein they fought.' ' 

— Petersburg, Va., Oct. 29, iSSj. 



VI. The McKinley Tariff of 1890. 

■ 1 do not intend to enter upon any extended 

discussion of the two economic systems which 

divide parties in this House and the people 

throughout the country. For two years we 

have been occupied in both branches of Con- 

ss and in our discussions before the people 

with these contending theories of taxation. 

"At the first session of the Fiftieth Con- 

>s the House spent several weeks in an 

elaborate -md exhaustive discussion of these 

systems. The Senate was for as many weeks 

ed in their investigation and in debate 



THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 63 

upon them, while in the political contest of 
1888 the tariff in all its phases was the ab- 
sorbing question, made so by the political 
platforms of the respective parties, to the 
exclusion, practically, of every other subject 
of party division. It may be said that, from 
the December session of 1887-88 to March 
4, 1889, no public question ever received, in 
Congress and out, such scrutinizing investiga- 
tion as that of the tariff. It has, therefore, 
seemed to me that any lengthy general dis- 
cussion of these principles at this time, so 
soon after their thorough consideration and 
determination by the people, is neither 
expected, required, nor necessary. 

" If any one thing was settled by the elec- 
tion of 1888, it was that the protective policy, 
as promulgated in the Republican platform 
and heretofore inaugurated and maintained 
by the Republican party, should be secured 
in any fiscal legislation to be had by the Con- 
gress chosen in that great contest and upon 
that mastering issue. I have interpreted that 
victory to mean, and the majority in this 
House and in the Senate to mean, that a 
revision of the tariff is not only demanded 
by the votes of the people, but that such re- 
vision should be on the line and in full 
recognition of the principle and purpose of 
protection. The people have spoken ; they 



6a Mckinley's masterpieces. 

want their will registered and their decree 
embodied in public legislation. The bill 
which the Committee on Ways and Means 
has presented is their answer and interpreta- 
tion of that victory and in accordance with 
its spirit and letter and purpose. We have 
not been compelled to abolish the internal 
revenue system that we might preserve the 
protective system, which we were pledged to 
do in the event that the abolition of the one 
was essential to the preservation of the other. 
That was unnecessary. 

" It is asserted in the views of the minority, 
submitted with the report accompanying this 
bill, that the operation of the bill will not 
diminish the revenues of the Government ; that 
with the increased duties we have imposed 
upon foreign articles which may be sent to 
market here we have increased taxation, and 
that, therefore, instead of being a diminution of 
tin- revenues of the Government, there will be 
an increase in the sum of $50,000,000 or $60,- 
000,000. Now, that statement is entirely mis- 
leading. It can only be accepted upon the 
assumption that the importation of the present 
year under this bill, if it becomes a law, will 
equal to the importations of like articles 
under the existing law; and there is not a 
member of the Committee on Ways and 
Means, there is not a member of the minority 



THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 65 

of that Committee, there is not a member of 
the House on either side, who does not know 
that the very instant that you have increased 
the duties to a fair protective point, putting 
them above the highest revenue point, that 
very instant you diminish importations and to 
that extent diminish the revenue. Nobody 
can well dispute this proposition. Why, when 
the Senate bill was under consideration by the 
Committee on Ways and Means, over which 
my friend from Texas presided in the last 
Congress, the distinguished chairman of that 
committee [Mr. Mills] wrote a letter to Sec- 
retary Fairchild inquiring what would be the 
effect of increased duties proposed under the 
Senate bill, and this is Mr. Fairchild's reply : 

" 'Where the rates upon articles successfully produced 
here are materially increased, it is fair to assume that 
the imports of such articles would decrease and the 
revenue therefrom diminish.' 

" He further states that where the rate up- 
on an article is so increased as to deprive the 
foreign producer of the power to compete with 
the domestic producer, the revenue from that 
source will cease altogether. Secretary Fair- 
child only states what has been the universal 
experience in the United States wherever in- 
crease of duties above the revenue point has 
been made upon articles which we can pro- 



66 m> kinley's masterpieces. 

i luce in the United States. Therefore, it is 
safe to assume that no increase of the reve- 
nues, taking the bill through, will arise from 
the articles upon which duties have been ad- 
vanced. Now as to the schedules : 

•The bill recommends the retention of the 
present rates of duty on earthen and china- 
ware. No other industry in the United States 
either deserves or requires the fostering care 
of Government more than this one. It is a 
business requiring technical and artistic 
knowledge, and the most careful attention to 
the many and delicate processes through 
which the raw material must pass to the com- 
pleted product. For many years, down to 
1863, the pottery industry of the United 
States had very little or no success, and made 
but slight progress in a practical and com- 
mercial way. At the close of the low-tariff 
period of i860, there was but one pottery in 
the United States, with two small kilns. 
There were no decorating kilns at the time. 
In 1S73, encouraged by the tariff and the 
gold premium, which was an added protection, 
we had increased to 20 potteries, with 68 
kilns, but still no decorating kilns. The capi- 
ta! invested was $1,020,000, and the value of 
1 Ik- product was $1,180,000. In 1882, there 
were 55 potteries, 244 kilns, 26 decorating 
kilns, with a capital invested of $5,076,000, 



THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 67 

and an annual product of $5,299,140. The 
wages paid in the potteries in 1882 were 
$2,387,000, and the number of employes en- 
gaged therein 7,000; the ratio of wages to 
sales, in 1882, was 45 per cent. In 1889, 
there were 80 potteries, 401 kilns, and deco- 
rating kilns had increased from 26 in 1822, to 
188 in 1889. The capital invested in the 
latter year was $10,957,357, the value of the 
product was $10,389,910, amount paid in 
wages, $6,265,224, and the number of em- 
ployes engaged, 16,900. The ratio of wages 
to sales was 60 per cent, of decorated ware 
and 50 per cent, of white ware. The per 
cent, of wages to value of product, it will be 
observed, has advanced from 45 per cent, in 
1882, to 60 per cent, in 1889. This increase 
is not due, as might be supposed, to an ad 
vance in wages, but results in a reduction in 
the selling price of the product and the im- 
mense increase in sales of decorated ware in 
which labor enters in greater proportion to 
materials. The total importation for 1874 
and 1875 °f earthenware was to the value of 
$4,441,216, and in 1888 and 1889 it ran up 
to $6,476,190. The American ware pro- 
duced in 1889 was valued at $10,389,910. 
The difference between the wages of labor in 
this country and competing countries in the 
manufacture of earthenware is fully 100 per 
cent. 



Mckinley's masterpieces. 

" The agricultural condition of the country 
has received the careful attention of the com- 
mittee, and every remedy which was believed 
to be within the power of tariff legislation to 
give has been granted by this bill. The de- 
pression in agriculture is not confined to the 
United States. The reports of the Agricul- 
tural Department indicate that this distress is 
genera] ; that Great Britain, France, and Ger- 
many are suffering in a larger degree than the 
farmers of the United States. Mr. Dodge, 
statistician of the department, says, in his re- 
port of March, 1890, that the depression in 
agriculture in Great Britain has probably been 
more severe than that of any other nation ; 
which would indicate that it is greater even in 
a country whose economic system differs from 
ours, and that this condition is inseparable 
from any fiscal system, and less under the 
protective than the revenue tariff system. 

" It has been asserted in the views of the 
minority that the duty put upon wheat and 
other agricultural products would be of no 
value to the agriculturists of the United 
States. The committee, believing differently, 
lias advanced the duty upon these products. 
A.S we are the greatest wheat - producing 
country of the world, it is habitually as- 
serted and believed by many that this prod- 
in -t is safe from foreign competition. We do 



THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 69 

not appreciate that while the United States 
last year raised 490,000,000 bushels of wheat, 
France raised 3 16,000,000 bushels, Italy raised 
103,000,000 bushels, Russia 189,000,000 bush- 
els, and India 243,000,000 bushels, and that 
the total production of Asia, including Asia 
Minor, Persia, and Syria, amounted to over 
315,000,000 bushels. Our sharpest competi- 
tion comes from Russia and India, and the 
increased product of other nations only serves 
to increase the world's supply, and diminish 
proportionately the demand for ours; and if 
we will only reflect on the difference between 
the cost of labor in producing wheat in the 
United States and in competing countries, we 
will readily perceive how near we are to the 
danger line, if indeed we have not quite 
reached it, so far even as our own markets are 
concerned. 

" Prof. Goldwin Smith, a Canadian and 
political economist, speaking of the Canadian 
farmers and the effect of this bill upon their 
interests, says : 

" 'They will be very much injured if the McKinley 
bill shall be adopted. The agricultural schedule will 
bear very hardly on the Canadian farmers who particu- 
larly desire to find a market in the United States for 
their eggs, their barley, and their horses. The Euro- 
pean market is of little value to them for their horses. 
If there shall be a slow market in England all the 



jo Mckinley's masterpieces. 

pn.tlts will be consumed on a cargo of horses and 
\ ill entail. I do not see how the Canadian 
fanners can export their produce to the United States 
if the McKinley bill shall become a law.' 

• If that be true, Mr. Chairman, then the 
annual exports of about $25,000,000 in agri- 
cultural products will be supplied to the 
people of the United States by the American 
fanner rather than by the Canadian farmer; 
and who will say that $25,000,000 of addi- 
tional demand for American agricultural 
products will not inure to the benefit of the 
American farmer; and that $25,000,000 dis- 
tributed among our own farmers will not 
relieve some of the depression now prevailing, 
and give to the farmer confidence and in- 
creased ability to lift the mortgages from his 
lands ? 

" The duty recommended in the bill is not 
alone to correct this inequality, but to make 
the duty on foreign tin plate high enough to 
insure its manufacture in this country to the 
extent of our home consumption. The only 

tson we are not doing it now and have not 
11 able to do it in the past is because of 
inadequate duties. We have demonstrated 
our ability to make it here as successfully as 
they do in Wales. We have already made it 
here. Two factories were engaged in pro- 
du( ing tin plate in the years 1873, 1874, and 



THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 7 I 

1875, but no sooner had they got fairly under 
way than the foreign manufacturer reduced 
his price to a point which made it impossible 
for our manufacturers to continue. When 
our people embarked in the business foreign 
tin plate was selling for $12 per box, and to 
crush them out, before they were firmly 
established, the price was brought down to 
$4.50 per box; but it did not remain there. 
When the fires were put out in the American 
mills, and its manufacture thought by the 
foreigners to be abandoned, the price of tin 
plate advanced, until in 1879 ft was selling 
for $9 and $10 a box. Our people again tried 
it, and again the prices were depressed, and 
again our people abandoned temporarily the 
enterprise, and, as a gentleman stated before 
the committee, twice they have lost their 
whole investment through the combination of 
the foreign manufacturers in striking down 
the prices, not for the benefit of the con- 
sumer, but to drive our manufacturers from 
the business ; and this would be followed by 
an advance within six months after our mills 
were shut down. 

" We propose this advanced duty to protect 
our manufacturers and consumers against the 
British monopoly, in the belief that it will 
defend our capital and labor in the production 
of tin plate until they shall establish an indus- 



■j 2 m< kinley's masterpieces. 

try which the English will recognize has come 
to stay, and then competition will insure 
regular and reasonable prices to consumers. 
It may add a little temporarily to the cost of 
tin plate to the consumer, but will eventuate 
in steadier and more satisfactory prices. At 
the present prices for foreign tin plate, the 
proposed duty would not add anything to the 
cost of the heavier grades of tin to the 
consumer. If the entire duty was added to 
the cost of the can it would not advance it 
more than one-third or one-half of one cent, 
for on a dozen fruit-cans the addition would 
properly only be about three cents. 

" Mr. Chairman, gentlemen on the other 
side take great comfort in a quotation which 
they make from Daniel Webster. They have 
thought it so valuable that they have put it in 
their minority report. It is from a speech 
made by Mr. Webster in Faneuil Hall in 1820 
when he condemned the protective policy. I 
want to put Daniel Webster in 1846 against 
Daniel Webster in 1820. Listen to an ex- 
tract from his speech of July 25, 1846 — the 
last tariff speech and probably the most elab- 
orate tariff speech that he ever made in his long 
public career. He then said : 

'But, sir, before I proceed further, I will take notice 
<-f what appears to be some attempt, latterly, by the 
republication of opinions and expressions, arguments 



THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 73 

and speeches of mine, at an earlier and a later period 
of my life, to place me in a position of inconsistency on 
this subject of the protective policy of the country. 
Mr. President, if it be an inconsistency to hold an 
opinion upon a subject of public policy to-day in one 
state of circumstances, and to hold a different opinion 
upon the same subject of public policy to-morrow in a 
different state of circumstances, if that be an incon- 
sistency, I admit its applicability to myself.' 

" And then, after discussing the great ben- 
efits of the protective tariff, he added : 

"' The interest of every laboring community requires 
diversity of occupations, pursuits, and objects of in- 
dustry. The more that diversity is multiplied or ex- 
tended the better. To diversify employment is to 
increase employment and to enhance wages. And, sir, 
take this great truth ; place it on the title-page of every 
book of political economy intended for the use of the 
Government ; put if in every farmer's almanac ; let it 
be the heading of the column in every mechanic's mag- 
azine; proclaim it everywhere, and make it a proverb, 
that where there is work for the hands of men there 
will be work for their teeth. Where there is employ- 
ment there will be bread. It is a great blessing to the 
poor to have cheap food, but greater than that, prior 
to that, and of still higher value, is the blessing of be- 
ing able to buy food by honest and respectable 
employment. Employment feeds, and clothes, and 
instructs. Employment gives health, sobriety, and 
morals. Constant employment and well - paid labor 
produce in a country like ours general prosperity, con- 
tentment, and cheerfulness. Thus happy have we seen 
the country. Thus happy may we long continue to 
see it.' 



- i Mckinley's masterpieces. 

•• In this happy condition we have seen the 
country under a protective policy. It is hoped 
we may long continue to see it, and if he had 
lived long enough he would have seen the best 
vindication of his later views. Then he con- 
tinued, and I commend this especially, in all 
kindness and with great respect, to the gentle- 
men of the minority of the committee : 

" ' I hope I know more of the Constitution of my 
country than I did when I was twenty years old. 

•■ ' I hope I have contemplated its great objects more 
broadly. I hope I have read with deeper interest the 
sentiments of the great men who framed it. I hope I 
have studied with more care the condition of the 
country when the Convension assembled to form it. 
. . . And now, sir, allow me to say that I am quite 
indifferent, or rather thankful, to those conductors of 
the public press who think they cannot do better than 
now and then to spread my poor opinions before the 
public. 1 

u What is the nature of the complaint against 
this bill- -that it shuts us out of the foreign 
market? No, for whatever that is worth to 
our ( Itizens will be just as accessible under 
this bill as under the present law. We place 
no lax or burden or restraint upon American 
products going out of the country. They are 
as free to seek the best markets as the prod- 
in is of any commercial power, and as free to 
>u1 .is though we had absolute free trade. 



THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 75 

Statistics show that protective tariffs have not 
interrupted our export trade, but that it has 
always steadily and largely increased under 
them. 

" In the year 1843, being the first year after 
the protective tariff of 1842 went into opera- 
tion, our exports exceeded our imports $40,- 
392,229, and in the following year they ex- 
ceeded our imports $3,141,226. In the two 
years following the excess of exports over 
imports was $15,475,000. The last year 
under that tariff the excess of exports over 
imports was $34,317,249. So during the five 
years of the tariff of 1842 the excess of ex- 
ports over imports was $62,175,000. Under 
the low tariff of 1846, this was reversed, and, 
with the single exception of the year 1858, 
the imports exceeded the exports (covering a 
period of fourteen years) $465,553,625. 

" We have now enjoyed twenty-nine years 
continuously of protective tariff laws — the 
longest uninterrupted period in which that 
policy has prevailed since the formation of the 
Federal Government - - and we find ourselves 
at the end of that period in a condition of 
independence and prosperity the like of which 
has never been witnessed at any other period 
in the history of our country, and the like of 
which has no parallel in the recorded history 
of the world. In all that goes to make a 



7 6 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

nation great and strong and independent we 
have made extraordinary strides. In arts, in 
science, in literature, in manufactures, in 
invention, in scientific principles applied to 
manufacture and agriculture, in wealth and 
credit and national honor we are at the 
very front, abreast with the best, and behind 
none. 

"In i860, after fourteen years of a revenue 
tariff, just the kind of a tariff that our 
political adversaries are advocating to-day, 
the business of the country was prostrated, 
agriculture was deplorably depressed, manu- 
facturing was on the decline, and the poverty 
of the Government itself made this nation a 
byword in the financial centres of the world. 
We neither had money nor credit. Both are 
essential ; a nation can get on if it has 
abundant revenues, but if it has none it 
must have credit. We had neither, as the 
legacy of the Democratic revenue tariff. We 
have both now. We have a surplus revenue 
and a spotless credit. I need not state what 
is so fresh in our minds, so recent in our his- 
tory as to be known to every gentleman who 
hears me, that from the inauguration of the 
protective tariff laws of 1861, the old Morrill 
tariff- which has brought to that veteran 
statesman the highest honor, and will give to 
him his proudest monument- - this condition 



THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 77 

changed. Confidence was restored, courage 
was inspired, the Government started upon a 
progressive era under a system thoroughly 
American. 

" With a great war on our hands, with an 
army to enlist and prepare for service, with 
untold millions of money to supply, the pro 
tective tariff never failed us in a single 
emergency, and while money was flowing into 
our treasury to save the Government, indus- 
tries were springing up all over the land — 
the foundation and corner-stone of our pros- 
perity and glory. With a debt of over 
$2,750,000,000 when the war terminated, 
holding on to our protective laws, against 
Democratic opposition, we have reduced that 
debt at an average rate of more than 
$62,000,000 each year, $174,000 every 
twenty-four hours for the last twenty -five 
years, and what looked to be a burden almost 
impossible to bear has been removed, under 
the Republican fiscal system, until now it is 
less than $1,000,000,000, and with the pay- 
ment of this vast sum of money the nation 
has not been impoverished. The individual 
citizen has not been burdened or bankrupted. 
National and individual prosperity have gone 
steadily on, until our wealth is so great as to 
be almost incomprehensible when put into 
figures. 



78 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

"First, then, to retain our own market, 
under the Democratic system of raising rev- 
enue by removing all protection, would re- 
quire our producers to sell at as low a price 
and upon as favorable terms as our foreign 
competitors. How could that be done ? In 
one way only — by producing as cheaply as 
those who would seek our markets. What 
would that entail? An entire revolution in 
the methods and condition and conduct of 
business here, a leveling down through every 
channel, to the lowest line of our competitors ; 
our habits of living would have to be changed, 
our wages cut down fifty per cent, more, our 
comfortable homes exchanged for hovels, our 
independence yielded up, our citizenship de- 
moralized. These are conditions inseparable 
to free trade ; these would be necessary if we 
would command our own market among our 
own people; and if we would invade the 
world's markets, harsher conditions and 
greater sacrifices would be demanded of the 
masses. Talk about depression — we would 
then have it in its fulness. We would revel 
in unrestrained trade. Everything would, in- 
deed, be cheap, but how costly when meas- 
ured by the degradation which would ensue ! 
When merchandise is the cheapest, men are 
the poorest, and the most distressing experi- 
ences in the history of our country — aye, in 



THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 79 

all human history — have been when every- 
thing was the lowest and cheapest, measured 
by gold, for everything was the highest and 
the dearest, measured by labor. We want no 
return of cheap times in our own country. 
We have no wish to adopt the conditions of 
other nations. Experience has demonstrated 
that for us and ours, and for the present and 
the future, the protective system meets our 
wants, our conditions, promotes the national 
design, and will work out our destiny better 
than any other. 

" With me, this position is a deep conviction, 
not a theory. I believe in it and thus warmly 
advocate it because enveloped in it are my 
country's highest development and greatest 
prosperity ; out of it come the greatest gains 
to the people, the greatest comforts to the 
masses, the widest encouragement for manly 
aspirations, with the largest rewards, dignify- 
ing and elevating our citizenship, upon which 
the safety, and purity, and permanency of 
our political system depend." —House of Rep- 
resentatives, May 7, i8go. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE PURITY OF THE BALLOT. 

At the foundation of a republican government 
rests a pure, intelligent, and untramelled ballot. This 
has always been McKinley's idea, and while depre- 
cating any survival of sectional animosities, he rigidly 
insists that the free ballot of the Constitution shall be 
guaranteed to the nation's humblest citizens. 

I. The War Is Over. 

"The war is over, the flag of the lost and 
wicked cause went down at Appomattox more 
than twenty years ago ; but that does not pre- 
vent us from insisting that all that was gained 
in war shall not be lost in peace. The con- 
test is over — we pray never to be resumed ; 
but that which was secured by so much blood, 
suffering, and sacrifice must be cheerfully ac- 
corded by every patriotic citizen. The strug- 
gle cost too much human life and public 
treasure to be apologized for, or frittered 
away, under any pretext. The results admit 
of no compromise. The standard of patri- 
otism and the respect for law must not be 
lowered; the hideous spectre of a wicked 
conspiracy need not be veiled. Patriotism 

80 



THE PURITY OF THE BALLOT. 8 1 

and obedience to the Constitution, the old as 
well as the new, must be kept to the forefront. 
Weak and sentimental gush must not be per- 
mitted to conceal disobedience of the law, or 
protect the flagrant violators of the rights of 
citizenship. The country's enemies were for- 
given long ago, liberal and magnanimous 
pardon was extended to them. Mutual for- 
bearance should be cultivated, honorable con- 
cessions were made upon both sides, but the 
freedom and political equality of all men 
must be fully and honorably recognized wher- 
ever our Hag floats." Campaign speech at 
I ronton, O., Oct. /, J 885. 



II. The Black Color-bearer. 

" Our black allies must neither be deserted 
nor forsaken. Every right secured them by 
the Constitution must be as surely given to 
them as though God had put upon their faces 
the color of the Anglo-Saxon race. They 
fought for the flag in the war, and that flag, 
with all it represents and stands for, must 
secure them every constitutional right in 
peace. At Baton Rouge, the first regiment 
of the Black Brigade, before starting for Port 
Hudson, received at the hands of its white 
colonel — Colonel Stafford — its regimental 



82 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

colors in a speech from the colonel, which 
ended with this injunction : 

" ' Color-bearer, guard, defend, protect, die 
for, but do not surrender, these colors.' 

"To which the sergeant replied — and he 
was as black as my coat : 

"'Colonel, I'll return those flags to you in 
honor, or I'll report to God the reason why.' 

" He fell mortally wounded, in one of the 
desperate charges in front of Port Hudson, 
with his face to the enemy, with those colors 
in his clenched fist pressed upon his breast. 
He did not return the colors, but the God 
above him knew the reason why. 

"Against those who fought on the other 
side in that great conflict we have no resent- 
ment; for them we have no bitterness. We 
would impose upon them no punishment ; we 
would inflict upon them no indignity. They 
are our brothers. We would save them even 
from humiliation. But I will tell you what we 
insist upon, and we will insist upon it until it 
is secured — that the settlement made be- 
tween Grant and Lee at Appomattox, which 
was afterward embodied in the Constitution 
of the United States, shall be obeyed and 
respected in every part of this Union. More 
we have never asked, less we will not have." — 
New York, " The American Volunteer Soldier," 
May jo, i88g. 



THE PURITY OF THE BALLOT. 83 

III. Fair Elections. 

"Mr. Chair mcui: — The first movement in 
the programme of a restored Democracy has 
already been accomplished, so far as this 
House is concerned, in the paralyzation of 
the executive force to preserve peace at the 
polls. The second step in the same pro- 
gramme is only checked by a few intervening 
days, when the purity of the ballot-box is to 
be submitted to the same lawlessness, with no 
power in the Federal head to insure or pre- 
serve it. 

"The proposition offered by Mr. Southard 
in the closing hours of the Forty-fifth Con- 
gress, and for the most part now renewed in 
the extraordinary session of the present Con- 
gress, to repeal certain sections of the statutes 
of the United States known as the Federal 
election laws, is a bold and wanton attempt 
to wipe from the law all protection of the 
ballot-box, and surrender its purity to the 
unholy hand of the hired repeater, and its 
control to the ballot-box stuffers of the great 
cities of the North and the tissue-ballot party 
of the South. 

" So determined is the Democratic party in 
the House to break down these wise and just 
measures, intended to secure an honest ballot 
to the legal voter, that they make them a rider 



84 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

to an important appropriation bill, making 
them, in the language of my colleague [Mr. 
McMahon]; ' a necessary companion to the 
money voted in the bill' 

" The repeal of these laws will remove 
every safeguard against fraud in the exerci.M 
of the elective franchise, and will again make 
possible the enormous outrages upon a pure 
ballot and free government which marked the 
elections in the city of New York and else- 
where in 1868, the wickedness and extent of 
which made existing laws necessary and 
imperative. The proposition we are now 
considering is an open assault upon the free- 
dom and purity of elections. 

"Article I. of the Constitution declares : 

"'The times, places, and manner of holding elec- 
tions for Senators and Representatives shall 1 »t_- 
prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof: 
but the Congress may at any time by law make or 
alter such regulations, except as to the places <>f 
choosing Senators. ' 

" This constitutional provision confers upon 
Congress full and adequate power at any time 
to make or alter times, places, and manner 
of holding elections for Representatives, and 
to make or alter such regulations. 

" The Democratic party has thus abandoned 
the constitutional objection by allowing the 
sections in relation to supervisors of elections, 



I UK PURITY OF THE BALLOT. 85 

with some limitations, to remain. They sur- 
render the constitutional doctrine so strenu- 
ously urged against existing law. My 
distinguished friend from Ohio [Mr. Hurd], 
and the gentleman from Kentucky [Mr. 
Carlisle], who addressed the Committee 
yesterday, seem not to have been present at 
the lasl caucus of their party, for their argu- 
ments are wholly based upon the constitutional 
question. Let me suggest to my friends that 
if the law is unconstitutional the courts are 
open to them, where that question can be 
judicially determined for all time ; and let me 
remind them that this law has been on the 
statute-book for now seven years, and the 
question they make, although decided ad- 
versely to their theory by an inferior court, 
has never found its way to the final tribunal 
in such eases — the Supreme Court of the 
United States. To that tribunal we invite 
them to go. I repeat, that permitting the 
supervisors' law to stand is a giving away of 
all constitutional objection to the entire body 
of the law. It explodes the old dogma of 
State rights, and removes all necessity for any 
discussion upon that point. 

" Enough of the law is left to recognize the 
principle always contended for by the Repub- 
lican party, that Congress had the power and 
that it was its plain duty to guard and protect 



Mckinley's masterpieces. 

elections where its own members were to be 
chosen to seats in this body ; but while admit- 
ting the constitutional right, they are careful 
to wipe out all the provisions which give such 
a law practical effect in securing an honest 
election and preventing force and fraud at the 
polls. They are in favor of the law, but 
opposed to its execution. 

* # =* # * 

" I have tried fairly to meet and answer the 
principal objections urged to this law. Are 
there any others ? In the discussion had in 
the Forty -fifth Congress much stress was 
placed upon the great expense attending the 
execution of the law. I learn that at Cincin- 
nati, in my own State, the expense of deputy 
marshals, in 1878, was less than $400, and 
they never had a fairer, purer election than at 
that time. But to this, in general terms, I 
answer, What signifies the cost, if thereby we 
can secure a free and fair ballot in this coun- 
try ? Who will count the cost, if the enforce- 
ment of this law will prevent the repeaters and 
moonshiners from controlling the elections 
and subverting the popular will ? For in- 
volved in this proposition is the existence of 
the Republic and the perpetuation of republi- 
can institutions. If honest, fair elections can 
not be had, free government is a farce; it is 
ii'» longer the popular will which is supreme. 



THE PURITY OF THE BALLOT. 87 

Free government can not be estimated by 
dollars nor measured by cost. We have long 
ago discarded that consideration. This ob- 
jection has been urged many times before to 
the enforcement of great fundamental doctrines 
and principles. The same objection was urged 
to the prosecution of the war for the preserva- 
tion of the Union and free government. Public 
sentiment did not listen then to the cry of 
cost ; it hesitated not, it faltered not then ; it 
ignored the cost ; it fought and successfully 
fought the great battle of freedom ; and public 
sentiment will not now pause to count the 
paltry cost, when free and fair elections, the 
foundation-stone of free government, are in- 
volved in the threatened danger. If I do not 
misjudge, the people who fought for free gov- 
ernment and maintained it at so great a cost 
will now be found firm and invincible for a 
free ballot and fair elections. Let me remind 
the other side of this Chamber that supervisors 
and marshals will not be needed, and therefore 
no cost will be incurred, whenever the party 
which employs tissue ballots and drives 
colored citizens from the polls shall do so no 
more forever, and whenever Democratic re- 
peaters shall cease to corrupt the ballot — the 
great fountain of power in this country ; in a 
single sentence, whenever, throughout this 
whole country, in every State thereof, citizen- 



88 mckinley's masterpieces. 

ship is respected and the rights under it are 
fully and amply secured ; when every citizen 
who is entitled to vote shall be secure in the 
free exercise of that right, and the ballot-box 
shall be protected from illegal voters, from 
fraud and violence, Federal supervisors of 
Federal elections will be neither expensive 
nor oppressive. 

" Has any legal voter in the United States 
been prevented from exercising his right of 
suffrage by this law, or by the officers acting 
under it ? This is the practical question. 
None that I have ever heard of ; while thou- 
sands, yes, tens of thousands of illegal voters 
have been deterred from voting by virtue of it. 
The honest voter has no fear of this law ; it 
touches him as lightly as the law of larceny 
touches the honest man, or the law of murder 
touches him whose hands are stainless of 
human blood. The thief hates the law of 
larceny, the murderer the law of homicide. 
They, too, can truthfully urge the cost of the 
execution of these laws; both are expensive 
and onerous to the taxpayer. But I have 
never known such arguments seriously enter- 
tained as a reason for their repeal. The law 
is without terror save to wrong-doers. The 
presence of officers of the law only deters 
criminals from the commission of crime. 
They are no restraint upon the honest man. 



THE PURITY OF THE BALLOT. 89 

You can form no system of laws which will 
not be open to some criticism and abuse. 
These prove nothing against the importance 
and necessity of their maintenance. If any 
better method can be offered for preserving 
the ballot-box in its purity, I will cordially 
accept it and labor for its passage, but until 
such better method is proposed we should 
stand by existing statutes. 

"We can not afford to break down a single 
safeguard which has been thrown around the 
ballot-box. Every guarantee must be kept 
and maintained. Fair-minded people every- 
where are interested in honest elections. It 
is not a partizan measure; it falls alike upon 
all political parties. The law recognizes no 
political creed, and those who execute it 
should carefully obey its letter and spirit. It 
protects Democrats and Republicans and men 
of all parties alike. 

"This House, not content with prohibiting 
the use of soldiers to keep the peace at the 
polls, forbidding their employment by the 
President in any emergency, however grave, 
now seeks to remove every remaining safe- 
guard to a fair and honest election. The 
better sentiment of the country, North and 
South, will not submit to such unbridled 
license upon the ballot-box. Mr. Chairman, 
what will the end be ? By an amendment to 



go m.kinley's masterpieces. 

an army appropriation bill which was not 
connected with the subject matter thereof, 
peace at the polls can no longer be main- 
tained by the Chief Executive, no matter how 
grave the emergency nor how pressing the 
necessity. Tumult and riot may hold high 
carnival at a Federal polling place, and the 
Federal arm is powerless to restrain it. This 
restriction of Federal power, this paralyzation 
of executive authority, ought to have satisfied 
the most extreme State rights Democrat ; but 
not so. Having forbidden the use of the ex- 
ecutive force to keep the peace at the polls, 
they now demand that the purity of the ballot 
and the freedom of the voter shall be subjected 
to the same lawlessness, with no power in the 
Government to restrain it. 

"Mr. Chairman, my purpose thus far has 
been to present this law, the repeal of which 
is demanded, upon its merits wholly. The 
proposition, however, of the Democratic side 
of the House is to offer this amendment, not 
to the sober, independent judgment of the 
House and the co-ordinate branches of the 
Government, but to rush it through, right or 
wrong, justly or unjustly, as a part of a bill 
making appropriations for the pressing and 
needful wants of the Government. It is an 
attempt to do by force what ought to be clone, 
il at all, in the free exercise of the law-making 



THE PURITY OF THE BALLOT. 9 1 

power by each branch of the Government 
acting in its proper functions under the Con- 
stitution. If force and coercion be not in- 
tended, then why not introduce and consider 
this legislation under the rules, with delibera- 
tion, and debate upon its own merits, inde- 
pendent and separate from an appropriation 
bill ? This is the ordinary course of legisla- 
tion, recognized by long practice, founded in 
wisdom, and never before abandoned for the 
purposes of coercion. Want of time can not 
be urged in favor of this course ; clays of 
idleness have already been spent sufficient 
for the purpose. The resort to this method 
of legislation is a confession of the injustice, 
wrong, and weakness of the proposed measure, 
and evinces a determination to accomplish 
wrongfully that which can not be rightfully 
accomplished. One of the pretexts urged in 
favor of placing this amendment upon an 
appropriation bill is that the law itself was 
passed by the Republicans in the same way. 
This impression has become so general 
throughout the country that it would seem 
necessary to state the facts in relation to the 
passage of the Supervisors' law. The law, 
substantially as it is now in the statutes, was 
introduced into the House, referred to the 
Judiciary Committee, considered by that 
Committee, and reported back to the House 



9? 



Mckinley s masterpieces. 



by its chairman, where it was discussed, 
voted upon, and passed entirely independent 
of any appropriation bill. It took the same 
course in the Senate. It was not a rider to a 
bill appropriating money. It is true that the 
sections extending the supervisors to county 
districts and restricting their powers in such 
districts were passed June 10, 1872, upon 
the Sundry Civil Appropriation Bill. 

"The first fruits of their dominion are not 
assuring to the country, and will not, I am 
certain, incline the people to clothe them with 
still greater power. Threatened revolution 
will not hasten it ; extra sessions, useless and 
expensive, will not accelerate it. Threat and 
menace, disturbing the business interests of 
the country, will only retard it. It will come 
when your party have shown that you deserve 
it. When you have demonstrated that the 
financial, industrial, and business interests of 
the nation are safer and wiser in your hands 
than in any other, and, more than all, when 
you have demonstrated that free government 
will not perish in your keeping, it will come 
then, and not before. I hope, Mr. Chairman, 
this amendment will not be insisted upon. It 
is wrong in itself; it endangers free govern- 
ment. [ believe the method proposed under 
the circumstances I have already designated 
is revolutionary. There is no necessity for 



THE PURITY OF THE BALLOT. 93 

such haste. The law can have no force and 
effect until 1880, except in the State of Cali- 
fornia. If the amendment must be passed, 
let it come in the ordinary course of legisla- 
tion. There will be ample time at the regular 
session next winter, and before any other 
Federal elections will be held. 

" The country is not asking for it. Business 
will suffer and is suffering every day from the 
agitation of a continued extra session of Con- 
gress. Uncertainty in legislation is a terror 
to all business and commercial interests, and 
this uncertainty exists and will continue so 
long as we remain in session. Let us remove 
it. Let us pass the appropriation bills, simple 
and pure. Let us keep the Executive Depart- 
ment in motion. Let the courts of the United 
States go on and clear up their already over- 
crowded dockets. Let the representatives of 
the Government abroad, upon whom our com- 
mercial relations with other nations so largely 
depend, be not crippled. Give the pensioners 
of the Government their well-earned and 
much -needed pensions. Let the Army be 
clothed, provisioned, and paid. Do this, 
striking out all political amendments from 
the appropriation bills, adjourn speedily, and 
give the country that peace and rest which 
will be promotive of the public good. When 
we have done this we have evidenced the 



94 



Mckinley's masterpieces. 



wisdom of statesmen and the work of patriots. 
[Great applause on the Republican side.] 
Let the people then, the final arbiter, the 
source of all power, decide the issue between 
us." — House of Representatives, April 18, i&jg. 



CHAPTER IV. 

FINANCE. 

The two selections here presented on finance are 
not voluminous, but they tell the whole story. In the 
tirst McKinley arraigns the Democratic financial 
policy, and in the second states his views concerning 
silver. No clearer exposition could have been made, 
or one more consistently Republican. 

I. The Purchase of Government Bonds. 

"And I charge here to-day that the Presi- 
dent of the United States and his adminis- 
tration are solely responsible for whatever 
congested condition we have in the Treasury 
and whatever alarm prevails about the 
finances of the country. Every dollar of it 
would have paid a dollar of the Government 
debts if the Secretary had exercised wisely 
the discretion given him by law. His way 
might have been justifiable if there had been 
no other means of putting the surplus money 
in circulation. He may lecture that side of 
the House as much as he will — doubtless 
they deserve it — but he can not avoid or 
evade the responsibility that rests on him. 
What does a man do who has a surplus 

95 



96 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

balance in the banks and has outstanding 
debts bearing interest? He calls in the evi- 
dence of those debts and pays them off with 
his surplus deposit. That is what a business 
man would have done ; that is what a busi- 
ness administration would have done ; and 
we would have had $50,000,000 less of inter- 
est-bearing bonds in circulation to-day if the 
President had followed the way blazed for 
him by the Republican party. 

"Well, now, I wonder, Mr, Chairman, if 
there was any ulterior motive in piling up 
this surplus ? I wonder if it was not for the 
purpose of creating a condition of things in 
the country which would get up a scare and 
stampede the country against the protective 
system ? I wonder if this was not just what 
was in the mind of the President : ' I will pile 
up this money in the Treasury, $65,000,000 
of it, and then I will tell Congress that the 
country will be filled with widespread disaster 
and financial ruin if it does not reduce the 
tariff duties ? ' If the President thought that 
he was going to get up a storm of indignation 
and recruit the free-trade army, break down 
the American system of protection, and put 
the free traders on top, he has probably dis- 
covered his blunder by this time ; and the 
best evidence of it is that he now wants the 
very law which he has so long discredited 



FINANCE. 97 

solemnly re-enacted, as if it were new and 
original with him ; and so, having failed, he 
comes here through his Secretary of the 
Treasury - - and I hope, Mr. Chairman, that 
the gentleman from Texas will read the letter 
of the Secretary upon this subject - - he 
comes here through his Secretary and asks us 
to pass this bill, which is a duplicate of exist- 



ing law. 



II. The Silver Bill. 



" Mr. Speaker: - - It seems to me that the sub- 
ject now under consideration is grave enough 
in every aspect to cause us, even at this last 
moment of the discussion, to pause and 
thoughtfully consider whether by our votes 
here to-day we shall reverse the well - estab- 
lished financial policy of the country. From 
1793 to 1873 we had the free and unlimited 
coinage of silver in the United States, the two 
metals fluctuating in value from time to time, 
rarely if ever at a parity, sometimes so vary- 
ing and unequal that the President of the 
United States was compelled to suspend the 
coinage of the silver dollar — a rule made by 
Jefferson in 1805 and followed for thirty years 
afterward. What we are considering here 
to-day, and what we have been considering 
almost without interruption for the last ten 
days, has been only the struggle of the cen- 



98 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

tury which has vexed the statesmen of all 
periods of our history, and that struggle has 
been to preserve the concurrent circulation of 
gold and silver, each on a parity with the 
other. And we have never been able to do it 
until now. At no time in the history of the 
United States have gold and silver so circu- 
lated side by side, in equal volume, as gold 
and silver have circulated concurrently since 
1878. 

" I believe, Mr. Speaker, that we should 
preserve these two moneys side by side. And 
it is because I want to preserve these equal 
standards of value that I have opposed and 
shall oppose concurrence in the Senate 
amendments. I do not want gold at a pre- 
mium, I do not want silver at a discount, or 
vice versa, but I want both metals side by side, 
equal in purchasing power and in legal-tender 
quality, equal in power to perform the func- 
tions of money with which to do the business 
and move the commerce of the United States. 
To tell me that the free and unlimited coinage 
of the world, in the absence of cooperation on 
the part of other commercial nations, will not 
bring gold to a premium, is to deny all history 
and the weight of all financial experience. 
The very instant that you have opened up our 
mints to the silver bullion of the world inde- 
pendently of international action, that very 



FINANCE. 99 

instant, or in a brief time at best, you have 
sent gold to a premium ; and when you have 
sent gold to a premium, then you have put it 
in great measure into disuse, and we are 
remitted to the single standard, that of silver 
alone ; we have deprived ourselves of the 
active use of both metals. It is only because 
of the safe and conservative financial policy 
of the Republican party, aided by the con- 
servative men of both parties, which has more 
than once received the approval of the coun- 
try, that since 1878 by our legislation we have 
compelled gold and silver to work together 
upon an equality, both employed as safe 
means of exchange in the business of our 
country. Let the bullion of the world come 
into this market from Europe and Asia, and 
then, whether gold flows out of this country or 
not, it flows out of the channels of business 
and the avenues of trade, and we are in 
danger of being driven to the use of silver 
alone. I oppose the Senate amendments 
because I want the use of both silver and 
gold. The gentlemen who favor the amend- 
ments of the Senate want silver to do the 
work alone, to be the sole agency of our 
exchanges. 

" Those of 'us who believe in conservative 
legislation want to utilize both metals and 
make both respond to the wants of trade. 



ioo Mckinley's masterpieces. 

They talk about silver being cheap money. 
And gentlemen no longer conceal, on that side 
and on this, that the reason they want silver 
is because it is cheap. I am not attracted by 
the word 'cheap,' whether applied to nations 
or to men, or whether it is applied to money. 
Whatever dollars we have in this country 
must be good dollars, as good in the hands 
of the poor as the rich ; equal dollars, equal 
in inherent merit, equal in purchasing power, 
whether they be paper dollars, or gold dollars, 
or silver dollars, or Treasury notes --each 
convertible into the other and each exchange- 
able for the other, because each is based 
upon equal value, and has behind it equal 
security ; good, not by the fiat of law alone, 
but good because the whole commercial 
world recognizes its inherent and inextin- 
guishable value. There should be no specu- 
lative features in our money, no opportunity 
for speculation in the exchanges of the people. 
They must be safe and stable. And I stand 
here to-day, speaking not for a single section, 
but for my country and for the whole country. 
I say that it is for the highest and best in- 
terests of all that, whatever money we have, it 
must be based upon both gold and silver, and 
represent the best money in the world." — 
House of Representatives, June 25, 18 go. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE INTERESTS OF LABOR. 

McKinley belongs to the common people. A son 
of sturdy, industrious parents of limited means, he has 
worked his own way over the successive rounds of 
effort to the eminence he now enjoys. He never 
forgets those who toil, and with the great American 
masses, in their aspirations for better things, his heart 
beats in warmest sympathy. 

I. Multum in Parvo. 

" We are a nation of working people. We 
glory in the fact that in the dignity and eleva- 
tion of labor we find our greatest distinction 
among the nations of earth." — Chicago, July 
4, 1895. 

" If I were called upon to say what, in my 
opinion, constitutes the strength, security, and 
integrity of our Government, I would say the 
American home. It lies at the beginning; it 
is the foundation of a pure national life. The 
good home makes the good citizen, the good 
citizen makes wholesome public sentiment, 
and good government necessarily follows." — 
Cincinnati, O., Labor Day, Sept. 1, 1891. 



101 



102 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

"When we constitute eight hours a day's 
work, instead of ten hours, every four days 
give an additional day's work to some work- 
ingman who may not have any employment at 
all. It is one more day's work, one more 
day's wages, one more opportunity for work 
and wages, an increased demand for labor. 
Therefore, I am in favor of this bill." -House 
of Representatives, Fifty-first Congress, August 
28, i8qo. 



II. The American Workingman. 

"The ideals of yesterday are the truths of 
to-day. What we hope for and aspire to now 
we will realize in the future if we are prudent 
and careful. If right is on our side, and we 
pursue resolute but orderly methods to secure 
our end, it is sure to come. There is no 
better way of securing what we want, and 
what we believe is best for us and those for 
whom we have a care, than the old way of 
striving earnestly and honestly for it. The 
labor of the country constitutes its strength 
and its wealth, and the better that labor is 
conditioned, the higher its rewards, the wider 
its opportunities, and the greater its comforts 
and refinements, the better will be our civili- 
zation, the more sacred will be our homes, the 
more capable our children, and the nobler will 



THE INTERESTS OF LABOR. 1 03 

be the destiny which awaits us. We can only 
walk in the path of right, resolutely insisting 
on the right, always being sure at the same 
time that we are right ourselves, and time will 
bring the victories. To labor is accorded its 
full share of the advantages of a government 
like ours. None more than the laborers en- 
joy the benefits and blessings which our free 
institutions make. This country differs in 
many and essential respects from other coun- 
tries, and, as is often said, it is just this dif- 
ference which makes us the best of all. It is 
the difference between our political equality 
and the caste conditions of other nations which 
elevates and enlightens the American laborer, 
and inspires within him a feeling of pride and 
manhood. It is the difference in recompense 
received by him for his labor and that re- 
ceived by the foreigner which enables him to 
acquire for himself and his a cheery home 
and the comforts of life. It is the difference 
between our educational facilities and the less 
liberal opportunities for learning in other 
lands which vouchsafes to him the priceless 
privilege of rearing a happy, intelligent, and 
God - fearing family. The great Matthew 
Arnold has truly said, ' America holds the 
future.' It is in commemoration of the 
achievements of labor in the past that Labor 
Day was established. It was eminently fitting 



104 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

that the people should turn aside on one day 
of the year from their usual vocation and re- 
joice together over the unequaled prosperity 
that has been vouchsafed to them. The 
triumphs of American labor can not easily be 
recited nor its trophies enumerated. But, 
great as they have been in the past, I am fully 
convinced that there are richer rewards in 
store for labor in the future." — Cincinnati, O., 
Sept. /, i8gi. 

III. The Eight-hour Law. 

"Mr. Speaker: — I am in favor of this bill. 
It has been said that it is a bill to limit the 
opportunity of the workingman to gain a live- 
lihood. This is not true ; it will have the op- 
posite effect. So far as the Government of the 
United States as an employer is concerned, 
in the limitation for a day's work provided in 
this bill to eight hours, instead of putting any 
limitation upon the opportunity of the Ameri- 
can freeman to earn a living, it increases and 
enlarges his opportunity. Eight hours under 
the laws of the United States constitute a 
day's work. That law has been on our statute- 
books for twenty-two years. In all these years 
it has been ' the word of promise to the ear,' 
but by the Government of the United States 
it has been ' broken to the hope.' The Gov- 



THE INTERESTS OF LABOR. 1 05 

ernment and its officials should be swift to 
execute and enforce its own laws ; failure in 
this particular is most reprehensible. Now, it 
must be remembered that when we constitute 
eight hours a day's work, instead of ten hours, 
every four days give an additional day's work 
to some workingman who may not have any 
employment at all. It is one more day's work, 
one more day's wages, one more opportunity 
for work and wages, an increased demand for 
labor. I am in favor of this bill as it is 
amended by the motion of the gentleman from 
Maryland. It applies now only to the labor 
of men's hands. It applies only to their 
work. It does not apply to material, it does 
not apply to transportation. It only applies 
to the actual labor, skilled or unskilled, em- 
ployed on public works and in the execution 
of the contracts of the Government. And 
the Government of the United States ought, 
finally and in good faith, to set this example 
of eight hours as constituting a clay's work re- 
quired of laboring men in the service of the 
United States. The tendency of the times the 
world over is for shorter hours for labor, 
shorter hours in the interest of health, shorter 
hours in the interest of humanity, shorter hours 
in the interest of the home and the family; 
and the United States can do no better ser- 
vice to labor and to its own citizens than to 



io6 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

set the example to States, to corporations and 
to individuals employing men by declaring 
that, so far as the Government is concerned, 
eight hours shall constitute a day's work, and 
be all that is required of its laboring force. 
This bill should be passed. My colleague, 
Mr. Morey, has stated what we owe the family 
in this connection, and Cardinal Manning, in 
a recent article, spoke noble words on the 
general subject when he said : 

" ' But if the domestic life of the people be 
vital above all, if the peace, the purity of 
homes, the education of children, the duties 
of wives and mothers, the duties of husbands 
and of fathers be written in the natural law 
of mankind, and if these things are sacred, far 
beyond anything that can be sold in the 
market, then I say, if the hours of labor re- 
sulting from the unregulated sale of a man's 
strength and skill shall lead to the destruction 
of domestic life, to the neglect of children, to 
turning wives and mothers into living ma- 
chines, and of fathers and husbands into- 
what shall I say, creatures of burden? — I 
will not say any other word — who rise up be- 
fore the sun, and come back when it is set, 
wearied and able only to take food and lie 
down to rest, the domestic life of men exists 
do longer, and we dare not go on in this 
path.' 



THE INTERESTS OF LABOR. 107 

" We owe something to the care, the eleva- 
tion, the dignity, and the education of labor. 
We owe something to the workingmen and 
the families of the workingmen throughout the 
United States, who constitute the large body 
of our population, and this bill is a step in the 
right direction." — House of Representatives. 
August 28, iSgo. 



CHAPTER VI. 

EDUCATIONAL TOPICS. 

Although McKinley's own education was not 
extensive, no man appreciates better than he the ad- 
vantages of learning and the delights of culture. The 
true meaning of these things he rightly estimates. 
Education is an American hobby. So is it a hobby 
of McKinley. 

I. In a Nut-shell. 

" An open schoolhouse, free to all, evi- 
dences the highest type of advanced civiliza- 
tion. It is the gateway to progress, prosperity, 
and honor — the best security for the liberties 
and independence of the people. It is better 
than garrisons and guns, than forts and fleets. 
An educated people governed by true, moral 
principles, can never take a backward step, 
nor be dispossessed of their citizenship or 
liberties." - - Canal Fulton, O., August jo, 
1887. 

II. Our Public Schools. 

" One thing essential to ' getting on in the 
world' is to have a purpose. Life without it 
will prove a failure, and all your efforts barren 

108 



EDUCATIONAL TOPICS. 109 

of results. Drifting will not do. You must 
have a port in view, from which storms and 
tempests, while they may divert your course 
for the time, can only delay, not defeat, your 
ultimate landing. Seek the calling to which 
you seem best adapted, and then do not 
expect too large results. Every legitimate 
calling is honorable, if we make it so, and 
leads to honor. Every young man should 
not enter what is called the 'learned profes- 
sions,' for all are not fitted to prosecute them 
successfully. The avenues to useful employ- 
ment, just as honorable and lucrative, are 
open upon every hand. The ' learned profes- 
sions ' are no longer the exclusive stepping- 
stones to official honor and the State's highest 
trusts. I would rather be able to shovel sand 
well than be a blundering doctor, a pettifog- 
ging lawyer, or an unsuccessful preacher, 
whom no congregation would welcome. It 
is far better to be at the head of any honor- 
able occupation, however lowly, than to be at 
the foot of the highest, no matter how exalted. 
Go at that which will secure you the front 
rank and give you a place in the front row. 
The rear rank and the back seat are doubtless 
indispensable in the march of mankind, but 
let the man occupy them who can do no 
better. 

" Public instruction wields a power vast 



no Mckinley's masterpieces. 



and far-reaching in its results. It was true, 
as the military attache wrote to his master, 
the lesser Napoleon, that ' the schoolmaster, 
not the needle-gun, triumphed at Sadowa. 
Knowledge, ideas, convictions, guided by a 
good conscience, win more battles for man- 
kind than bullet or shell. Prussia was regen- 
erated, under the lead of Von Hardenberg 
and Von Stein, by the system of common - 
school education. In the United States, 
education has always been the national 
instinct ; an enlightened citizenship is now, 
as ever before, the hope of the Republic. 
Our country owes much, immeasurably more 
than aught else, to her educational system, 
and we must appreciate more and more, as 
her growth continues and her power increases, 
that the hope of the Republic is in an educated 
and enlightened citizenship, which fears God 
and walks uprightly. I congratulate you upon 
the completion of this imposing structure, 
and still more upon the grand uses to which 
it is dedicated." — Dedication of Public School, 
Canal Fulton, Ohio, August jo, 1887. [Copy- 
right.'] 

III. From the History of Oberlin College. 

"In the winter of 183 4^3 5, Oberlin Col- 
lege was the first to admit colored students. 



EDUCATIONAL TOPICS. Ill 

This was a mighty and majestic step forward, 
and it was never retraced. It favored, from 
its beginning, coeducation. It occupied the 
very outpost of liberty ; it has remained al- 
ways upon the skirmish line. It is said that, 
in 1840, one of the young students of the 
university said to Father Keep, 'When will 
slavery be abolished ? ' He answered, with 
the confidence born of his own faith and cour- 
age, ' In about twenty years ; ' and that which 
for so long was only hope and prayer became 
performance and fulfilment almost within the 
prophecy of the venerable teacher. The in- 
stitution was dedicated by its founders not 
only to the most liberal education, which 
should include both sexes, all classes, and all 
races, but was consecrated to liberty and 
equality among men. These great funda 
mental ideas have never been for a moment 
lost sight of since. They have been adhered 
to in trial and triumph. What influence 
Oberlin College has had upon the Republic 
and its citizenship and institutions, no man 
can tell. It hated slavery, and proclaimed it 
defiantly. No slave was ever returned from 
its corporation into bondage, and no slave 
ever came within its gates who was not wel- 
comed and protected. The case of John Price, 
the colored boy, who was seized by the United 
States officers and rescued by the cicizens 



I 



ii2 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

of Oberlin, is now almost forgotten history. 
That was in 1858, and the whole authority of 
the General Government was enlisted for the 
return of that boy to slavery, and yet, in less 
than five years, the spirit of Oberlin spread 
throughout the North. Then came the proc- 
lamation of Abraham Lincoln that made all 
slaves free, free to go to every corner of the 
country within the jurisdiction of the flag. 
They were earnest, God - fearing men who 
built your great university ; built it, not alone 
for themselves and their immediate descend- 
ants, but for posterity. 

" The students of Oberlin College were 
some of the pioneers in the early struggles to 
make Kansas a free State. They went wher- 
ever freedom was assailed ; they literally 
flocked to that Territory which the South had 
said should be dedicated to slavery. Their 
teachers and their preachers went forth from 
your institution to teach the truth and justice 
of the Declaration of Independence. Your 
pupils were in every department of the Army. 
No more patriotic community existed any- 
where in the United States than Oberlin. 
Your first contribution was a company to the 
old historic Seventh Ohio, which Captain 
Shurtleff, one of your professors, commanded. 
You made contributions to other regiments 
and to other arms of the service, and every 



EDUCATIONAL TOPICS. 113 

boy or man who went from your institution 
understood exactly what he was fighting for. 
Every shot he fired was directed by conscience 
and for freedom. He fought not only for the 
Union as it was, but the Union as it is, with 
slavery destroyed and freedom nationalized. 
I have read somewhere that my old friend, 
Professor Monroe, with whom I served so 
many years in Congress, a man of peace and 
opposed to contention, really made the first 
war speech that was ever made in your village, 
and made it in the old First Church, urging 
the boys to go forth and fight the battles of 
their country, and that it was his earnest ap- 
peal that led to the organization of the first 
company that went from the walls of your 
institution. It was from your institution Gen- 
eral Cox, the distinguished soldier and states- 
man, went forth, who became a Major-General, 
and was the first brigade commander under 
whom I served. Hosts of others are promi- 
nent in business, in education, in the pulpit, 
in literature and in science. The old names 
should be dear to the alumni and friends of 
the institution : Asa Mahan, John Jay Ship- 
herd, Stewart, Shepard, Waldo, Dascomb, 
Finney, Dr. John Morgan, Rev. Henry and 
John P. Cowles, with many others, contem- 
poraries and successors. These names should 
not only be remembered and honored at your 



ii4 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

reunions, but should be dearly cherished by 
you and by the friends of freedom every- 
where. I want to congratulate you all on 
your achievements, and I join with all in 
urging that a fund be raised to enable this 
distinguished professor to carry on his work. 
Do not give up your peculiarities. They are 
excellences peculiar to your own institution. 
Stick to them ! " — Annual dinner of Cleveland 
Alumni, Cleveland, Ohio, March j, 1892. 
[Copyright.] 



IV. Education and Citizenship. 

" Mr. President, Members of the Faculty and 
Students of the Ohio State University, and Fel- 
low Citizens : — The Prussian maxim, ' What- 
ever you would have appear in the life of a 
nation, you must put into your schools,' I 
would amend : ' What you would have appear 
in the life of a nation, you must put into your 
homes and schools.' The beginning of edu- 
cation is in the home, and the great advantage 
of the American system of instruction is 
largely due to the elevated influences of the 
happy and prosperous homes of our people. 
There is the foundation, and a most impor- 
tant part of education. If the home life be 
pure, sincere, and good, the child is usually 
well prepared to receive all the advantages 



EDUCATIONAL TOPICS. 115 

and inspirations of more advanced education. 
The American home, where honesty, sobriety, 
and truth preside, and the simple every-day 
virtues are practised, is the nursery of true 
education. Out of such homes usually come 
the men and women who make our citizenship 
pure and elevating, and the State and nation 
strong and enduring. 

" It is unfortunate that the great National 
University which Washington so strenuously 
advocated was not long ago established, with 
an endowment commensurate with the dignity 
and importance of our Government, to which 
all the universities of all the States would 
be auxiliary institutions and tributary in the 
same degree that our public schools are be- 
coming more and more training-schools for 
the State universities. To my mind the need 
of such a university is as essential to-day for 
the welfare of the Republic as the most en- 
lightened and progressive nation of the world 
as it was in the days of our first greatest 
President. His great character and broad 
comprehension not only dominated the age 
in which he lived, but his advice may yet be 
followed to the great advantage of the youth 
of this and future ages. 

" In the limitations of an address of this 
character, it is impossible to do more than 
allude to the great work of the States of the 



n6 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

Union, in their independent relations, in be- 
half of education. It has surpassed even the 
high standard of the nation. Two items may 
be given in illustration : The total expendi- 
tures of the country in support of the common 
schools in 1870 were $63,300,000; in 1880, 
$78,100,000; and in 1890, $140,370,000, an 
average increase of nearly $4,000,000 per 
annum. The value of school property has 
also greatly increased. In 1870 it was 
$130,380,000; in 1880, $209,571,000; and 
in 1890, $342,876,000, an average increase 
per year of $10,000,000 for the whole period. 
" In addition to this great outlay by the 
nation and the States, America has just rea- 
son to be proud of the private benefactions 
which her philanthropic citizens are constantly 
making to her colleges and universities. In 
the founding of public libraries and in aid of 
the higher schools from 187 1 to 1891 the 
amount of these gifts exceeded $80,000,000, 
or more than $4,000,000 a year. I have been 
pleased to observe that this great University 
has not been neglected in this regard. The 
wise beneficence of the late Hon. Henry F. 
Page, of Circleville, the widow of the late 
Hon. Henry C. Noble, and, more recently, of 
the Hon. Emerson McMillin, of Columbus, are 
examples worthy of emulation by those who 
have been favored by fortune. Surely accu- 



EDUCATIONAL TOPICS. I I J 

mulated wealth can find no object so deserv- 
ing and so far-reaching in its benefits. 

" But what has been the result of this un- 
paralleled expenditure and munificence ? We 
behold, first, the most satisfactory progress in 
the public schools, whose enrolment has now 
reached 13,203,877 pupils, or twenty-three per 
cent, of our entire population, a greater per- 
centage than that of any other nation in the 
world. The people were never more willing 
to pour out their treasure for the support of 
these schools. The annual expenditure in the 
United States compared with other countries 
shows how near they are to the hearts* of the 
people. The expenditure in Italy is $7,000, 
000, or twenty-five cents per capita ; in Austria, 
$12,000,000, or thirty cents per capita; in 
Germany, $26,000,000, or fifty cents per capita ; 
in France, $31,000,000, or eighty cents per 
capita; in Great Britain, $48,000,000, or $1.30 
per capita; in the United States, in 1892, 
$156,000,000, or $2.40 per capita. Our cen- 
sus returns of 1890 show that eighty-seven per 
cent, of our total population over ten years of 
age can read and write. ' In the history of 
the human race,' says Mulhall, the English 
statistician, ' no nation ever before possessed 
41,000,000 instructed citizens.' 

" But, Mr. President, we must not forget 
that the whole aim and object of education 



u8 mckinley's masterpieces. 

is to elevate the standard of citizenship. The 
uplifting of our schools will undoubtedly re- 
sult in a higher and better tone in business 
and professional life. Old methods and 
standards may be good, but they must ad- 
vance with the new problems and needs of 
the age. The collegiate methods of the 
Eighteenth Century will not suffice for the 
Twentieth, any more than the packhorse 
could meet the demands of the great freight 
traffic of to-day. This age demands an edu- 
cation which, while not depreciating in any 
degree the inestimable advantages of high 
intellectual culture, shall best fit the man 
and woman for his or her calling, whatever 
it may be. In this the moral element must 
not be omitted. Character - - Christian char- 
acter — is the foundation upon which we 
must build if our institutions are to endure. 
Our obligations for the splendid advantages 
we enjoy should not rest upon us too lightly. 
We owe to our country much. We must give 
in return for these matchless educational 
opportunities the best results in our lives. 

We must make our citizenship worthy the 
great Republic, intelligent, patriotic, and self- 
sacrificing, or our institutions will fail of their 
high purpose, and our civilization will inevi- 
tably decline. Our hope is in the public 

schools and in the university. Let us fer- 



EDUCATIONAL TOPICS. 119 

vently pray that they may always be gener- 
ously supported, and that those who go out 
from these halls will be themselves the best 
witnesses of their force and virtue in popular 
government." — Cohunbus, Ohio, June 12, /&<Jj. 



CHAPTER VII. 

RELIGION. 

Major McKinley is a man of deep and sincere 
religious faith. A member of the Methodist Church, 
his career has demonstrated that success with one's 
fellow men is not incompatible with religious profes- 
sion and an earnest Christian life. 

I. To the Epworth League. 

" I am glad and honored to welcome you to 
the State of Ohio. A return to birthplace is 
always interesting, and this was the birthplace 
of the Epworth League. It excites the ten- 
derest emotions and sentiments of the human 
heart, and recalls the sweetest memories and 
associations. Such a visit is suggestive of 
retrospection and introspection, and, if the 
intervening years have been successful, of 
congratulation and felicitation. You could 
have had no better State in which to be born 
than Ohio, and no better place in Ohio than 
the city of Cleveland. We are proud of the 
fact that the Epworth League started here, 
and rejoice in its marvelous success, and 
affectionately welcome the daughter to her 
home and to our hearts. We share in the 



RELIGION. 12 1 

pride which the Christian world feels over the 
great achievements already recorded, and of 
the certain promise of still greater honors yet 
to be recorded. The purpose of your organ- 
ization is worthy of the highest commendation. 
I rowever we may differ in our religious beliefs, 
your aims command the approval of those who 
respect good conscience and value good 
character." — Cleveland, OJiio, June 30, iSgj. 



II. An Auxiliary to Religion. 

"Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: — I 
am very glad to join with the citizens of 
Youngstown in celebrating the completion of 
this beautiful building, dedicated to the young 
men for physical, moral, and religious training. 
I congratulate the young men upon their good 
fortune and unite with them in gratitude to 
the generous, public- spirited people through 
whose efforts this Christian home has been 
established. It will stand a monument to 
your city, and an honor to those who have 
shared in its erection. It will be an auxiliary 
to all moral and religious effort. It will be 
the vestibule to the Church, and the gateway 
to a higher and better Christian life. It will 
not take the place of the Church, and other 
agencies for good, but it will supplement and 
strengthen them all. 



122 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

" It is a good omen for our civilization and 
country when these Associations can be suc- 
cessfully planted as a part of the system of 
permanent education for the improvement and 
elevation of the masses; it is another step 
upward and onward to a higher and grander 
Christian civilization. It is another recogni- 
tion of the Master who rules over all, a 
worthy tribute to Him who came on earth to 
save fallen man and lead him to a higher 
plane. It is an expression of your faith in an 
overruling Providence, and strengthens the 
faith of every believer. You have been made 
better by the gifts you have bestowed upon 
this now completed undertaking ; you have 
the approval of not only your own con- 
sciences, but you have the gratitude of the 
present generation, and you will have, in all 
time to come, the blessings of those who are 
to be the future beneficiaries of this institu- 
tion. Respect for true religion and righteous 
living is on the increase. Men no longer feel 
constrained to conceal their faith to avoid 
derision. The religious believer commands 
and receives the highest consideration at the 
hands of his neighbors and countrymen, how- 
ever much they may disagree with him ; and 
when his life is made to conform to his relig- 
ious professions, his influence is almost with- 
out limitation, wide-spread and far-reaching. 



RELIGION. 123 

" No man gets on so well in this world as 
he whose daily walk and conversation are 
clean and consistent, whose heart is pure and 
whose life is honorable. A religious spirit 
helps every man. It is at once a comfort and 
an inspiration, and makes him stronger, wiser, 
and better in every relation of life. There is 
no substitute for it. It may be assailed by 
its enemies, as it has been, but they offer 
nothing in its place. It has stood the test of 
centuries, and has never failed to help and 
bless mankind. It is stronger to-day than at 
any previous period of its history, and every 
event like this you celebrate increases its 
permanency and power. The world has use 
for the young man who is well grounded in 
principle, who has reverence for truth and re- 
ligion, and courageously follows their teach- 
ings. Employment awaits his coming, and 
honor crowns his path. More than all this, 
conscious of rectitude, he meets the cares of 
life with courage; the duties which confront 
him he discharges with manly honesty. These 
Associations elevate and purify our citizenship, 
and establish more firmly the foundations of 
our free institutions. The men who estab- 
lished this Government had faith in God and 
sublimely trusted in Him. They besought 
His counsel and advice in every step of their 
progress. And so it has been ever since ; 



124 Mckinley s masterpieces. 

American history abounds in instances of this 
trait of piety, this sincere reliance on a Higher 
Power in all great trials in our national affairs. 
Our rulers may not always be observers of the 
outward forms of religion, but we have never 
had a President, from Washington to Harrison, 
who publicly avowed infidelity, or scoffed at 
the faith of the masses of our people. 

" It is told of Lincoln that he once called 
upon General Sickles, who had just been 
brought from the field to Washington City, 
having lost a leg in one of the charges at 
Gettysburg. His call was one of sympathy, 
and, after he had inquired into every detail of 
that great and crucial battle, General Sickles 
said to him : 

" ' Mr. Lincoln, what did you think of Get- 
tysburg ? Were you much concerned about 
it?' 

" Lincoln replied, ' I thought very little 
about Gettysburg, and I had no concern about 
it.' 

" The general expressed great surprise, and 
said that he had understood that the capital 
was in a great panic as to the outcome, and 
asked : 

" ' Why were you not concerned about the 
battle of Gettysburg ? ' 

"'Well,' replied the simple-minded Lincoln, 
'• I will tell you, if you will not tell anybody 



RELIGION. 125 

about it. Before that battle I went into my 
room at the White House, I knelt on my 
knees, and I prayed to God as I had never 
prayed to Him before, and I told Him if He 
would stand by us at Gettysburg I would 
stand by Him ; and He did, and I shall. 
And when I arose from my knees I imagined 
I saw a spirit that told me I need not trouble 
about Gettysburg.' 

" May this institution meet the fullest ex- 
pectations of its founders and projectors, and 
prove a mighty force in the well-being of the 
community ! Interested as I am in every 
department of work in our State, I can not 
avoid especial and peculiar interest in any- 
thing which benefits the Mahoning Valley, the 
place where I was born, and where I spent my 
younger manhood, and around which cling 
tender and affectionate memories that can 
never be effaced. I am glad to share this 
day with you, to participate in these exercises 
which open the doors of this building to the 
young men of this valley, consecrated to hon- 
orable uses, and for their lasting good. I 
wish you prosperity in your workshops, love 
in your homes, and bid you Godspeed in this 
laudable work." — Dedication of Y. M. C. A. 
Building, Youngstown, O., Sept. 6, 18Q2. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

MISCELLANEOUS POLITICAL ADDRESSES. 

Of the miscellaneous political addresses from which 
selections are here gathered, the best thing that can 
be said to the reader is that they give their own intro- 
duction, and from them may be gained a completer 
knowledge of the versatility of McKinley's genius, and 
his ready adaptability to the demands of any hour. 
There is no branch of our public life which his intel 
lect has not illuminated. 

I. Civil Service Reform. 

" Mr. Chairman : — In the single moment 
that I have, I desire to say that I am opposed 
to the amendment of the gentleman from 
Tennessee to strike from this bill the appro- 
priation for the execution of the civil service 
law. My only regret is that the Committee 
on Appropriations did not give to the Com- 
mission all the appropriation that was asked 
for the improvement and extension of the 
system. If the Republican party of this 
country is pledged to any one thing more than 
another, it is to the maintenance of the civil 
service law and its efficient execution ; not 
only that, but to its enlargement and its 
further application to the public service. 

126 



MISCELLANEOUS POLITICAL ADDRESSES. I 27 

"The law that stands upon our statute- 
books to-day was put there by Republican 
votes. It was a Republican measure. Every 
national platform of the Republican party 
since its enactment has declared not only in 
favor of its continuance in full vigor, but in 
favor of its enlargement so as to apply more 
generally to the public service. And this, 
Mr. Chairman, is not alone the declaration 
and purpose of the Republican party, but it is 
in accord with its highest and best sentiment 
— aye, more, it is sustained by the best senti- 
ment of the whole country, Republican and 
Democratic alike. There is not a man on this 
floor who does not know that no party in this 
country, Democratic or Republican, will have 
the courage to wipe it from the statute-book 
or amend it save in the direction of its 
improvement. 

" Look at our situation to-day. When the 
Republican party has full control of all the 
branches of the Government it is proposed to 
annul this law of ours by withholding appro- 
priations for its execution, when for four years 
under a Democratic administration nobody on 
this side of the House had the temerity to rise 
in his place and make a motion similar to the 
one now pending for the nullification of the 
law. We thought it was good then, good 
enough for a Democratic administration ; and 






128 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

I say to my Republican associates it is good 
enough for a Republican administration ; it is 
good and wholesome for the whole country. 
If the law is not administered in letter and 
spirit impartially, the President can and will 
supply the remedy. 

" The Republican party must take no step 
backward. The merit system is here, and it 
is here to stay ; and we may just as well 
understand and accept it now, and give our 
attention to correcting the abuses, if any exist, 
and improving the law wherever it can be 
done to the advantage of the public service." 
— House of Representatives, April 24, 18 go. 



II. Notification Address to Mr. Harrison. 

" President Harrison : — This Committee, 
representing every State and Territory in the 
Union, are here to perform the trust com- 
mitted to them by the Republican National 
Convention, which convened at Minneapolis 
on June 7, 1892, of bringing you official 
notification of your nomination as the Re- 
publican candidate for President of the 
United States. We need hardly assure you 
of the pleasure it gives us to convey the 
message from the Republicans of the country 
to their chosen leader. Your nomination was 
but the registering by the Convention of the 



MISCELLANEOUS POLITICAL ADDRESSES. I 29 

will of the majority of the Republicans of 
the United States, and has been received in 
every quarter with profound satisfaction. 

"In 1888 you were nominated after a 
somewhat prolonged struggle, upon a plat- 
form which declared with clearness the pur- 
poses and policies of the party, if intrusted 
with power, and upon that platform you were 
elected President. You have had the good 
fortune to witness the execution of most of 
those purposes and policies during the ad- 
ministration of which you have been the 
head, and in which you have borne a most 
conspicuous part. If there has been failure 
to embody into law any one of those purposes 
or policies, it has been no fault of yours. 
Your administration has more than justified 
your nomination four years ago, and the 
confidence of the people implied by your 
election. After one of the most careful, suc- 
cessful, and brilliant administrations in our 
history, you have received a renomination, an 
approval of your work, which must bring to 
you the keenest gratification. To be nomi- 
nated for a second term upon the merits of 
his administration is the highest distinction 
which can come to an American President. 
The difficult and embarrassing questions 
which confronted your administration have 
been met with an ability, with a fidelity to 



130 MCKINLEY S MASTERPIECES. 

duty, and with a lofty patriotism which fills 
the American heart with glowing pride. Your 
domestic policy has been wise, broad, and 
statesmanlike ; your foreign policy firm, just, 
and truly American. These have won the 
commendation of the thoughtful and con- 
servative, and the confidence of your country- 
men, irrespective of party ; and will, we hope 
and believe, insure your triumphant election 
in November. 

" We beg to hand to you the platform of 
principles unanimously adopted by the Con- 
vention which placed you in nomination. It 
is an American document. Protection, which 
shall serve the highest interests of American 
labor and American development ; reciprocity, 
which, while seeking the world's markets for 
our surplus products, shall not destroy Ameri- 
can wages or surrender American markets for 
products which can be made at home ; honest 
money, which shall rightly measure the labor 
and exchanges of the people, and cheat 
nobody ; honest elections, which are the true 
foundation of all public authority — these 
principles constitute for the most part the 
platform, principles to which you have al- 
ready by word and deed given your earnest 
approval, and of which you stand to-day the 
exponent and representative. These and 
other matters considered in the platform will 



MISCELLANEOUS POLITICAL ADDRESSES. 131 

command and receive your careful considera- 
tion. 

" I am bidden by my associates, who come 
from every section of the nation, to assure 
you of the cordial and hearty support of a 
harmonious and united Republican party. In 
conclusion, we desire to extend to you our 
personal congratulations, and to express our 
gratification at the rare honor paid you by a 
renomination, with a firm faith that the 
destinies of this great people will be con- 
fided to your care and keeping for four 
years longer." — Executive Mansion, Washing- 
ton, June 20, i8q2. 

III. Not a Candidate. 

" Mr. President and Gentlonen of the Con- 
vention : — I am here as one of the chosen 
representatives of my State. I am here by 
resolution of the Republican State Convention, 
passed without a single dissenting voice, 
commanding me to cast my vote for John 
Sherman for President, and to use every 
worthy endeavor for his nomination. I ac- 
cepted the trust because my heart and judg- 
ment were in accord with the letter and spirit 
and purpose of that resolution. It has pleased 
certain delegates to cast their votes for me for 
President. I am not insensible to the honor 



132 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

they would do me, but in the presence of the 
duty resting upon me I can not remain silent 
with honor. I can not, consistently with the 
wish of the State whose credentials I bear, 
and which has trusted me; I can not with 
honorable fidelity to John Sherman, who has 
trusted me in his cause and with his confi- 
dence ; I can not, consistently with my own 
views of personal integrity, consent, or seem 
to consent, to permit my name to be used as 
a candidate before this Convention. I would 
not respect myself if I could find it in my 
heart to do so, or permit to be done that which 
could even be ground for any one to suspect 
that I wavered in my loyalty to Ohio, or my 
devotion to the chief of her choice and the 
chief of mine. I do not request — I demand, 
that no delegate who would not cast reflection 
upon me shall cast a ballot for me." - Repub- 
lican National Convention, Chicago, Jllinois, June 
23, 1888. 



IV. Prosperity and Politics. 

" It is loudly proclaimed through the Dem- 
ocratic press that prosperity has come. I 
sincerely hope that it has. Whatever pros- 
perity we have has been a long time coming, 
and after nearly three years of business 
depression, a ruinous panic and a painful and 



MISCELLANEOUS POLITICAL ADDRESSES. 133 

wide-spread suffering among the people. I 
pray that we may be at the dawn of better 
times and of enduring prosperity. I have 
believed it would come, in some measure, 
with every successive Republican victory. I 
have urged for two years past that the election 
of a Republican Congress would strip the 
Democratic party of power to further cripple 
the enterprises of the country, and would be 
the beginning of a return of confidence, and 
that general and permanent prosperity could 
only come when the Democratic party was 
voted out of power in every branch of the 
national Government, and the Republican 
party voted in, pledged to repeal their 
destructive and un-American legislation, which 
has so seriously impaired the prosperity of the 
people and the revenues and credit of the 
Government." 

" It is a most significant fact, however, that 
the activity in business we have now is 
chiefly confined to those branches of industry 
which the Democratic party was forced to 
leave with some protection, notably, iron and 
steel. There is no substantial improvement 
in those branches of domestic industry where 
the lower duties or no duties on the Demo- 
cratic tariff have sharpened and increased 
foreign competition. These industries are 
still lifeless, and if not lifeless, are unsatis- 



134 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

factor}' and unprofitable, both to capital and 
labor. 

" There is a studied effort in certain quar- 
ters to show that the apparent prosperity 
throughout the country is the result of Demo- 
cratic tariff legislation. I do not think that 
those who assert this, honestly and sincerely 
believe it. It is worth remembering, and can 
never be forgotten, that there was no revival 
of business, no return of confidence or gleam 
of hope in business circles, until the elections 
of 1894, which, by unprecedented majorities, 
gave the popular branch of Congress to the 
Republican party, and took away from the 
Democratic party the power to do further 
harm to the industries of the country and the 
occupations of the people. This was the aim, 
meaning, and purpose of that vote. With the 
near and certain return of the Republican 
party to full possession of power in the United 
States, comes naturally and logically in- 
creased faith in the country and assurance to 
business men that, for years to come, they will 
have rest and relief from Democratic incom- 
petency in the management of the industrial 
and financial affairs of the Government. 
Whatever prosperity we are having (and just 
how much nobody seems to know), and with all 
hoping for the best, and hoping that it may 
stay and increase, and yet all breathless with 



MISCELLANEOUS POLITICAL ADDRESSES. 135 

suspense, is in spite of Democratic legislation, 
and not because of it. 

" The Republican party never conceals its 
purposes. They are an open book to be read 
by every man. The whole world knows 
them ; it has embodied them in law, and 
executed them in administration almost unin- 
terruptedly since the 4th of March, 1861. It 
has bravely met every emergency in all those 
trying years, and has been adequate to every 
public obligation and public duty. It is dedi- 
cated to the people ; it stands for the United 
States ; it believes that this Government 
should be run by ourselves and for ourselves , 
its simple code is home and country, its cen- 
tral idea is the well-being of the people and 
all the people ; it has no aim which does not 
take into account the honor of the Govern- 
ment and the material and intellectual well- 
being and happiness of the people. We can 
do no better than to stick to the old party — 
indeed, we can not do so well as to stick to 
the old party which guided the Republic for a 
third of a century in safety and honor ; which 
gave the country adequate revenue, and, while 
doing that, gave capital profitable investment 
and labor comfortable wages and steady em- 
ployment ; which guarded every American 
interest at home and abroad with zealous 
care ; which never lowered the flag of our 



136 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

country, but whose business has ever been to 
exalt it, and whose principles, the application 
of which has made us a nation of happy 
homes, of independent and prosperous free- 
men." - Springfield, Ohio, Sept. 10, 1895. 



V. Presidential Candidates. 

"Among the distinguished names now 
mentioned in connection with the Republican 
nomination for the Presidency, we find an 
eminent citizen of our own State, whom in the 
past we have delighted to honor, and whose 
long and useful public career has made his 
name and fame nation-wide. Four times 
elected to the National House of Representa- 
tives by his home district, three times chosen 
to the Senate of the United States, the Chair- 
man of the Finance Committee of that hon- 
orable body, closely identified with all the 
great public measures in the past twenty -five 
years, and himself the author of much of the 
wisest legislation of the country within that 
period; elevated in 1876 to the important 
position of Secretary of the Treasury, his 
administration of the finances of the nation 
has been characterized by the highest skill, 
and his matchless achievements in that de- 
partment have commanded the admiration 
and wonder of the financial world ; to him 



MISCELLANEOUS POLITICAL ADDRESSES. 137 

the nation owes a debt of gratitude which his 
elevation to the Presidency would fitly recog- 
nize, and Ohio would honor herself in honor- 
ing John Sherman with a hearty and cordial 
support at the Chicago Convention. 

" But if the choice of the Convention shall 
fall upon the great soldier of the Republic, 
the leader of our armies, the ' silent man of 
the century,' General Ulysses S. Grant ; or 
upon that preeminent citizen of New Eng- 
land, for years the great leader of the popular 
branch of Congress, now the peer of the 
foremost Senator in that body of master 
statesmen, who has always and everywhere 
boldly defended Republicanism against the 
assaults of the Democracy, the peerless 
debater, the fearless statesman, James G. 
Blaine — let us unite in pledging Ohio's 
twenty-two electoral votes to the nominee of 
that Convention, whoever he may be. 

" Nearly twenty years ago the Republican 
party attained national power in this country, 
and for the most part has held it without in- 
terruption since. Its history records the most 
stirring events in the nation's life, and there 
is nothing in its long and eventful career of 
which any patriot need be ashamed, or which 
any loyal American citizen would efface. 
Shall the old party be mustered out of power 
now? Has it done its work? Thus far it 
kas, and well. 



138 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

" It came into power first to drive oppression 
out and save liberty from a cruel death. Its 
work is not yet done. Liberty was but half 
of the great undertaking ; after that, security 
to our institutions — civil and political equal- 
ity — must be established firmly and forever. 
Its mission is, therefore, not ended, and can 
never end until every freeman is an independ- 
ent citizen, with every privilege of citizenship 
guaranteed by the Constitution, and until 
there shall not be within the boundaries of any 
section of this great country one foot of 
ground over which our flag floats and upon 
which a citizen stands who may not speak and 
think and vote as he pleases. 

" Appreciating, therefore, the overshadowing 
importance of the issues involved ; impressed 
with the absolute necessity of another Repub- 
lican triumph ; and measuring all the difficul- 
ties in our pathway, let us summon the 
requisite energy and make another grand 
effort to place in power in this Republic the 
men and the party by whose fidelity and patri- 
otism its life was preserved. Let this contest 
end in the supremacy of law and loyalty." — 
Republican State Convention, Columbus, O., 
April 28, 1880. 

VI. On Counting a Quorum. 
" Gentlemen on the other side insist upon 



MISCELLANEOUS POLITICAL ADDRESSES. I 39 

what ? That they shall perpetuate a fiction — 
that is what it is — that they shall perpetuate 
a fiction because they say it is hoary with age, 
a fiction that declares that although members 
are present in their seats they shall be held 
under a fiction to be constructively absent. 
That is what they are contending for. We 
are contending that this shall be a fact and a 
truth, and that members who sit in their seats 
in this hall shall be counted as present because 
they are present. They want our journal to 
declare a lie ; we want the journal to declare 
the truth. And it is the truth that hurts their 
position and makes it indefensible." -House 
of Representatives, Fifty-first Congress, Jan. jo, 
j 8 go. 



CHAPTER IX. 

MEMORIAL DAY AND PATRIOTISM. 

Major McKinley is at his best in a patriotic 
address. His own early experience in camp and on 
the battle-field, showing how highly as a youth he 
loved the Union, has also enabled him the better to 
estimate the great work of his comrades-in-arms, by 
whose heroism and devotion our country was pre- 
served. 

I. Gems of Patriotic Expression. 

" Every anniversary, national or local, prop- 
erly observed, is a positive good. It empha- 
sizes the ties of home and country. It appeals 
to our better aspirations and incites us to 
higher and nobler aims." — Youngstown, O., 
Sept. 14, 1887. 

"The admonition of Lincoln — to 'care for 
him who shall have borne the battle and for 
his widow and his orphan' — will never be 
forgotten or neglected so long as the Repub- 
lican party holds the reins of power. Full 
justice will always be done to the soldiers and 
sailors of the Union."— At Orrville, O., Aug. 
26, i8qo. 



140 



MEMORIAL DAY AND PATRIOTISM. 141 

" There is not a volunteer soldier before 
me, there is not a volunteer of the Republic 
anywhere, who would exchange his honorable 
record in behalf of freedom and mankind, in 
behalf of the freest and best government on 
the face of the earth, for any money consider- 
ation. His patriotism is above price. It can 
not be bought. It is not merchandise for 
barter. It is not in the market. I thank God 
there are some things that money can not 
buy, and patriotism is one of them." -Canton, 
O., May jo, iHgi. 

II. Memorial Day Address. 

"This day has been given to the dead, but 
its lessons are intended for the living. It has 
been the occasion for a generous manifesta- 
tion on the part of the people of their gratitude 
to the men who saved the country in war. 
But its true intent will have been lost if it has 
failed to inspire in all our hearts a deeper 
sentiment of patriotism and a stronger attach- 
ment to those great ideas for which these men 
gave their lives. It is an impressive fact to 
contemplate that to-day millions of our fellow 
citizens from every part of the country have 
abandoned all thoughts of business, and turned 
their footsteps to the places where sleep our 
heroic dead, that they may with loving hands 



142 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

and grateful hearts pay tender tribute to their 
virtues and their valor. This consecration day 
is a popular demonstration of affection for the 
patriotic dead and bears unmistakable evi- 
dence that patriotism in the United States has 
not declined or abated. 

"There was nothing personally attractive 
about any of the features of enlistment in the 
War of the Rebellion. It was business of the 
most serious sort. Every soldier took a dread- 
ful chance. His offering was nothing short of 
his own life-blood if required. These, how- 
ever, then seemed insignificant in that over- 
mastering love of country, in that fervent 
patriotism which filled the souls of the boys, 
in that high and noble resolve which they all 
possessed, that they were to save to them- 
selves, to their families, and their fellow coun- 
trymen, the freest and purest government, 
and to mankind the largest liberty and the 
highest and best civilization in the world. 
With that spirit more than two million men 
went forth to accept any sacrifice which cruel 
war might exact. The extent of that sacrifice 
exceeded human expectation, but it was offered, 
freely offered, for the country. Can we ever 
cease to be debtors to these men ? Is there 
anything they are not worthy to receive at our 
hands ? Is there any emolument too great for 
them ? Is there any benefaction too bounti- 



MEMORIAL DAY AND PATRIOTISM. 1 43 

ful ? Is there any obligation too lasting ? Is 
there any honor too distinguished which a 
loving people can bestow that they ought not 
to receive ? What the nation is or may be- 
come we owe to them. If there is one of 
these fighting patriots sick at heart and dis- 
couraged, the cheerful and the strong, who 
are the beneficiaries of his valor, should com- 
fort and console him. If there is one who is 
sick or suffering from wounds, the best skill 
and the most tender nursing should wait upon 
and attend him. 

" It is interesting to note the size of our 
armies in the several wars in which the 
United States has participated. The number 
of Colonial troops in the Revolution was 
294,791. In the War of 1812 the total num- 
ber of Americans was 576,622. In the Mexi- 
can War the troops engaged for the United 
States numbered 112,230. The number of 
Union troops engaged in the Rebellion was 
2,859,000, or three times the combined force 
of the American army in all former wars. 
The magnitude of the struggle is also strik- 
ingly illustrated by a comparison of casualties. 
The casualties in the War of 18 12 were 1,877 
killed in battle, 3,739 wounded. In the Mexi- 
can war, 1,049 were killed, 904 died of 
wounds, and 3,420 were wounded. In the 
War of the Rebellion 61,362 were killed out- 



j 44 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

right, 34,627 died of wounds, and 183,287 
died of disease. In other words, our casual- 
ties in the Rebellion in killed and those who 
died of wounds and disease were only 15,000 
less in number than the entire army of the 
United Colonies in the war with Great Brit- 
ain, and two and one-half times the entire 
force engaged on the part of the United 
States in the war with Mexico. But it gives 
us a truer idea of the dreadful sacrifices of 
the country to compare our casualties with 
the casualties of European wars. At the 
battle of Waterloo there were 80,000 French 
with 252 guns, and of the Allies, 72,000 
troops and 186 guns. The loss of the French 
was 26,000, estimated, and of the Allies, 
23,185. At our battle of Gettysburg, the 
Union force engaged was 82,000 and 300 
guns. The Confederates had 70,000 troops 
and 250 guns. The loss was 25,203 to the 
Union forces, and 27,525 to the Confederate 
forces. Gravelotte was the bloodiest battle 
of the Franco-Prussian War, and the German 
loss was in killed, 4,449, anc ^ wounded 15,189, 
out of 146,000 troops engaged. Meade's loss 
at Gettysburg was greater in numbers while 
he had only one-half as many men engaged. 

" The pension list of the Government tells 
well the story of the suffering of our great 
army. On June 30, 1893, pensions were paid 



MEMORIAL DAY AND PATRIOTISM. 145 

to 725,742 invalid soldiers, and to 185,477 
widows. In the navy pensions were paid to 
16,901 invalid sailors and to 6,697 widows, 
making a grand total of 934,817 pensioners. 
Our pension roll on June 30, 1893, contained 
nearly as many pensioners as the entire 
muster rolls of the United States in the War 
of the Revolution, in the War of 18 12, and the 
Mexican War combined. Within 50,000 as 
many names are now borne on our pension 
rolls as were contained on the enlistment rolls 
of all our armies in every war from the Revo- 
lution to the Civil War. 

" My comrades, this long and highly honor- 
able list is being diminished by death and will 
rapidly decrease as the years go by. The 
pension roll has probably now reached its 
maximum. Hereafter it is likely to recede. 
Death will stalk through that patriotic list 
with increased rapidity as age overtakes it, as 
it is hourly doing, that great army of 1861. 
The older veterans can not last a great while 
longer. Kxposure has hastened to their door 
the steps of the pale messenger. God grant 
that while they are still with us they shall 
enjoy, without stint or grudge, the bounteous 
benefactions of the country they served and 
the tender care and the generous respect of 
their neighbors and fellow citizens! ' Dis 
placed from the pension roll ' by death carries 



146 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

no taint of dishonor, raises no suspicion of 
unworthiness. If the pension roll is dimin- 
ished, or displacement occurs from other 
causes, let it be for reasons just and honor- 
able. Then the patriotic sentiment of the 
country will approve and the soldiers of the 
Republic will be quick to applaud. Let us 
care for the needy survivors of that great 
struggle in the true spirit of him who prom- 
ised that the nation would ' care for him who 
shall have borne the battle, and for his widow 
and his orphans.' 

" Sumter and Appomattox ! What a flood 
of memories these names excite. How they 
come unbidden to every soldier as he con- 
templates the great events of the war. The 
one marked the beginning, the other the close 
of the great struggle. At one the shot was 
fired which threatened this Union and the 
downfall of liberty. The other proclaimed 
peace and^wrote in history that the machina- 
tions which inaugurated war to establish a 
government with slavery as its corner-stone 
had failed. The one was the commencement 
of a struggle which drenched the nation in 
blood for four years; the other was its end 
and the beginning of a reunited country 
which has lasted now for twenty -nine years, 
and which, God grant, may last forever and 
forever more, blazing the pathway of freedom 



MEMORIAL DAY AND PATRIOTISM. 1 47 

to the races of man everywhere, and loved by 
all the peoples of the world ! The one marked 
the wild rush of mad passion ; the other was 
the restoration of the cool judgment, disci- 
plined by the terrible ordeal of four years 
bloody war. Patriotism, justice, and right- 
eousness triumphed. The Republic which 
God had ordained withstood the shock of 
battle, and you and your comrades were the 
willing instruments in the hands of that 
Divine power that guides nations which love 
and serve Him. 

"Howells, thirty- two years ago, expressed 
the simple and sublime faith of the soldier, 
and the prophecy of the outcome of the war, 
in words which burn in my soul whenever I 
pass in review the events of that struggle. 
He said : 

'" Where are you going, soldiers, 

With banner, gun, and sword? ' 
4 We 're marching south to Canaan 
To battle for the Lord! ' 

" Yes, the Lord took care of us then. Will 
we heed His decrees and preserve unimpaired 
what He permitted us to win ? Liberty, my 
countrymen, is responsibility ; responsibility 
is duty ; duty is God's order, and when faith- 
fully obeyed will preserve liberty. We need 
have no fears of the future if we will perform 



148 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

every obligation of duty and of citizenship. 
If we lose the smallest share of our freedom, 
we have no one to blame but ourselves. This 
country is ours — ours to govern, ours to 
guide, ours to enjoy. We are both sovereign 
and subject. All are now free, subject hence- 
forth to ourselves alone. We pay no homage 
to an earthly throne ; only to God we bend the 
knee. The soldier did his work and did it 
well. The present and the future are with 
the citizen, whose judgment in our free coun- 
try is supreme." — Music Hall, Canton, Ohio, 
May jo, 1894. 



III. The American Volunteer Soldier. 

" Mr. President and Comrades of the Grand 
Army of the Republic, and my Fellow Citizens : 
— The Grand Army of the Republic is on duty 
to-day. But not in the service of arms. The 
storm and siege and bivouac and battle line 
have given place to the ministrations of peace 
and the manifestations of affectionate regard 
for fallen comrades, in which the great body 
of the people cheerfully and reverently unite. 
The service of the day is more to us — far 
more to us — than to those in whose memory 
it is performed. It means nothing to the 
dead, everything to the living. It reminds us 
of what our stricken comrades did and sacri- 



MEMORIAL DAY AND PATRIOTISM. 1 49 

need and won. It teaches us the awful cost 
of liberty and the price of national unity, and 
bids us guard with sacred and sleepless vig- 
ilance the great and immortal work which 
they wrought. 

"The annual tribute which this nation 
brings to its heroic dead is, in part at least, 
due to American thought and conception, 
creditable to the living and honorable to the 
dead. No nation in the world has so honored 
her heroic dead as ours. The soldiery of no 
country in the world have been crowned with 
such immortal meed or received at the hands 
of the people such substantial evidences of 
national regard. Other nations have deco- 
rated their great captains and have knighted 
their illustrious commanders. Monuments 
have been erected to perpetuate their names. 
Permanent and triumphal arches have been 
raised to mark their graves. Nothing has 
been omitted to manifest and make immortal 
their valorous deeds. But to America is 
mankind indebted for the loving and touching 
tribute this day performed, which brings the 
offerings of affection and tokens of love to 
the graves of all our soldier dead. We not 
only honor our great captains and illustrious 
commanders, the men who led the vast armies 
to battle, but we shower equal honors in 
equal measure upon all, irrespective of rank in 



150 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

battle or condition at home. Our gratitude is 
of that grand patriotic character which recog- 
nizes no titles, permits no discrimination, sub- 
ordinates all distinctions ; and the soldier, 
whether of the rank and file, the line or the 
staff, who fought and fell for Liberty and 
Union — all who fought in the great cause 
and have since died, are warmly cherished 
in the hearts, and are sacred to the memory of 
the people. 

" Mr. President, from the very commence- 
ment of our Civil War we recognized the 
elevated patriotism of the rank and file of the 
army and their unselfish consecration to the 
country, while subsequent years have only 
served to increase our admiration for their 
splendid and heroic services. They enlisted 
in the army with no expectation of promo- 
tion ; not for the paltry pittance of pay ; not 
for fame or popular applause, for their ser- 
vices, however efficient, were not to be her- 
alded abroad. They entered the army moved 
by the highest and purest motives of patriot- 
ism, that no harm might befall the Republic. 
While detracting nothing from the fame of 
our matchless leaders, we know that, without 
that great army of volunteers, the citizen 
soldiery, the brilliant achievements of the 
war would not have been possible. They, my 
fellow citizens, were the great power. They 



MEMORIAL DAY AND PATRIOTISM. 151 

were the majestic and irresistible force. They 
stood behind the strategic commanders, whose 
intelligent and individual earnestness, guided 
by their genius, gained the imperishable vic- 
tories of the war. I would not withhold the 
most generous eulogy from conspicuous sol- 
diers, living or dead — from the leaders, 
Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Thomas, Meade, 
Hancock, McClellan, Hooker, and Logan — 
who flame out the very incarnation of sol- 
dierly valor and vigor before the eyes of the 
American people, and have an exalted rank in 
history, and fill a great place in the hearts of 
their countrymen. We need not fear, my fel- 
low citizens, that the great captains will be 
forgotten. 

Jt, J/* J^ Ji. JL 

*7V" "TV TV" "TV* -TV* 

" My fellow citizens, the rank and file of the 
old Regular Army was made of the same 
heroic mold as our Volunteer Army. It is a 
recorded fact in history, that when treason 
swept over this country in 1861 — when dis- 
tinguished officers, who had been educated at 
the public expense, who had taken the oath to 
support the Constitution of the United States 
and defend this Government against all its 
enemies, when they proved recreant to trust 
and duty, and enlisted under the banner of 
the Confederacy — the rank and file of that 
old army stood steadfast to Federal author- 



152 Mckinley s masterpieces. 

ity, loyal to the Federal Government, and no 
private soldier followed his old commander 
into the ranks of the enemy. None were 
false to conscience or to country. None 
turned their backs on the old flag. 

" The most splendid exhibition of devotion 
to country, and to the Government, and the 
flag, was displayed also by our prisoners of 
war. We had 175,000 soldiers taken prison- 
ers during the Civil War, and when death was 
stalking within the walls of their prisons, 
when starvation was almost overcoming their 
brave hearts, when mind was receding and 
reason was tottering, liberty was offered to 
those 175,000 men upon one condition — that 
they would swear allegiance to the Confeder- 
ate Government, and enlist in the cause of 
the Confederacy. What was the answer of 
our brave but starving comrades ? There 
could be but one answer. They preferred to 
suffer all and to bear all rather than prove 
false to the cause they had sworn to defend. 

" Now, so far removed from the great war, 
we are prone to forget its disasters and under- 
estimate its sacrifices. Their magnitude is 
best appreciated when contrasted with the 
losses and sacrifices of other armies in other 
times. There were slain in the late war 
nearly 6,000 commanding officers and over 
90,000 enlisted men, and 207,000 died of 



MEMORIAL DAY AND PATRIOTISM. 1 53 

disease and from exposure, making a grand 
total of 303,000 men. In the War of the 
Revolution between the United States and 
Great Britain, excluding those captured at 
Yorktown and Saratoga, the whole number 
of men killed and wounded and captured of 
the combined British and American forces 
was less than 22,000. We witnessed that loss 
in a single battle in a single day in the great 
Civil War. From 1775 to 1861, including all 
the foreign wars in which we were engaged, 
and all our domestic disturbances, covering a 
period of nearly twenty-four years, we lost but 
ten general officers, while in the four and a 
half years of the late war, we lost one hundred 
and twenty-five. 

" And, my fellow citizens, we not only knew 
little of the scope and proportions of that great 
war, or the dreadful sacrifice to be incurred, 
but as little knew the great results which were 
to follow. We thought at the beginning, and 
we thought long after the commencement of 
the war, that the Union to be saved was the 
Union as it was. That was our understand- 
ing when we enlisted, that it was the Consti- 
tution and the Union — the Constitution as it 
was and the Union as it was — for which we 
fought, little heeding the teachings of history, 
that wars and revolutions can not fix in ad- 
vance the boundaries of their influence or 



154 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

determine the scope of their power. History 
enforces no sterner lesson. Our own Revolu- 
tion of 1776 produced results unlooked for by 
its foremost leaders. Separation was no part 
of the original purpose. Political alienation 
was no part of the first plan. Disunion was 
neither thought of nor accepted. Why, in 
1775, on the 5th day of July, in Philadelphia, 
when the Continental Congress was in session 
declaring its purposes toward Great Britain, 
what did it say ? After declaring that it would 
raise armies, it closed that declaration with 
this significant language : 

" ' Lest this declaration should disquiet the minds of 
some of our friends and fellow subjects in other parts 
of the Empire, we assure them that we do not mean to 
dissolve the union which has so long and happily sub- 
sisted between us.' 

" Our fathers said in that same declaration : 

" ' We have not raised armies with ambitious designs 
to separate from Great Britain and establish inde- 
pendent States.' 

" Those were the views of the fathers. 
Those were the views entertained by the 
soldiers and statesmen of colonial days. Why, 
even the Declaration of Independence, which 
has sounded the voice of liberty to all man- 
kind, was a shock to some of the colonists. 



MEMORIAL DAY AND PATRIOTISM. 1 55 

The cautious and conservative, while believing 
in its eternal truth, doubted its wisdom and its 
policy. It was in advance of the thought of 
the great body of the people. Yet it stirred a 
feeling for independence, and an aspiration 
for self-government, which made a republic 
that has now lived more than a century ; and 
only a few days ago you were permitted to 
celebrate the centennial inauguration in this 
city of its first great President. Out of all that 
came a republic that stands for human rights 
and human destiny, which to-day represents 
more than any other government the glorious 
future of the human race. 

" Comrades of the Grand Army of the 
Republic, those were brave men whose graves 
we decorated to-day. No less brave were those 
whose chambers of repose are beneath the 
scarlet fields in distant States. We may say 
of all of them as was said of Knights of St. 
John in the Holy Wars : ' In the forefront 
of every battle was seen their burnished mail, 
and in the gloomy rear of every retreat was 
heard their voice of conscience and of cour 
age.' ' It is not,' said Mr. Lincoln, ' what 
we say of them, but what they did, which will 
live.' They have written their own histories, 
they have builded their own monuments. No 
poor words of mine can enhance the glory of 
their deeds, or add a laurel to their fame. 



156 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

Liberty owes them a debt which centuries of 
tribute and mountains of granite adorned by 
the master hands of art can never repay. 
And so long as liberty lasts and the love of 
liberty has a place in the hearts of men, they 
will be safe against the tooth of time and the 
fate of oblivion. 

' k The nation is full of the graves of the 
dead. You have but a small fraction of them 
here in New York, although you contributed 
one-tenth of all the dead, one-tenth of all the 
dying, one -tenth of all the prisoners, one- 
tenth of all the sacrifices in that great conflict. 
You have but a small number here ; the 
greater number sleep in distant States, 
thousands and tens of thousands of them of 
whom there is no record. We only know that 
fighting for freedom and union they fell, and 
that the place where they fell was their 
sepulchre. The Omniscient One alone knows 
who they are and whence they came. But 
when their immortal names are called from 
their silent muster, when their names are 
spoken, the answer will come back, as it w r as 
the custom for many years in one of the 
French regiments when the name of De la 
Tour d 'Auvergne was called, the answer came 
back, ' Died on the field of honor.' America 
has volumes of muster-rolls containing just 
such a record. 



MEMORIAL DAY AND PATRIOTISM. 157 

" Mr. President and comrades of the 
Grand Army of the Republic, our circle is 
narrowing with the passing years. Every 
annual roll-call discloses one and another 
not present, but accounted for. There is a 
muster-roll over yonder as well as a muster- 
roll here. The majority of that vast army 
are fast joining the old commanders who have 
preceded them on that other shore. 

" ' They are gone who seemed so great — 

Gone! but nothing can bereave them 
Of the force they made there own 

Being here ; and we believe them 
Something far advanced in state, 

And that they wear a truer crown 
Than any wreath that man can weave them. 

Speak no more of their renown, 
And in the vast cathedral leave them. 
God accept them ; Christ receive them.'" 

— Metropolitan Opera House, N. K, May jo, 
1889. 



CHAPTER X. 

EULOGIES. 

Me Kin ley's eulogies on the six heroes, Hayes, 
Kclley, Garfield, Grant, Logan, and Lincoln, formed 
a volume in themselves well worth the study of every 
American youth. Only in part can these masterpieces 
of oratory be here reproduced. But from these selec- 
tions the reader will be impressed with their author's 
judicious temper, his keen insight into human charac- 
ter, and his warm appreciation of the qualities of true 
nobility. In these orations one may almost see 
mirrored McKinley's own character and ideals. 

I. James A. Garfield. 

"Mr. Speaker: — Complying with an act of 
Congress passed July, 1864, inviting each of 
the States of the Union to present to National 
Statuary Hall the statues of two of its de- 
ceased citizens ' illustrious for their heroic re- 
nown, or distinguished by civic or military 
services ' worthy of national commemoration, 
Ohio brings her first contribution in the mar- 
ble statue of James Abram Garfield. There 
were other citizens of Ohio earlier associated 
with the history and progress of the State and 
illustrious in the nation's annals who might 
have been fitly chosen for this exalted honor. 

158 



EULOGIES. 159 

Governors, United States Senators, members 
of the supreme judiciary of the nation, 
closely identified with the growth and great- 
ness of the State, who fill a large space in 
their country's history; soldiers of. high 
achievement in the earlier and later wars of the 
Republic ; Cabinet ministers, trusted asso- 
ciates of the martyred Lincoln, who had de- 
veloped matchless qualities and accomplished 
masterly results in the nation's supreme crisis ; 
but from the roll of illustrious names the 
unanimous voice of Ohio called the youngest 
and latest of her historic dead, the scholar, 
the soldier, the national Representative, the 
United States Senator-elect, the President of 
the people, the upright citizen, and the desig- 
nation is everywhere received with approval 
and acclaim. 

" By the action of the authorities of the 
State he loved so well and served so long, and 
now, by the action of the national Congress 
in which he was so long a conspicuous figure, 
he keeps company to-day with ' the immortal 
circle ' in the old Hall of Representatives, 
which he was wont to call the ' Third House,' 
where his strong features and majestic form, 
represented in marble, will attract the homage 
of the present and succeeding generations, as 
in life his great character and commanding 
qualities earned the admiration of the citizens 



160 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

of his own State and the nation at large, 
while the lessons of his life and the teachings 
of his broad mind will be cherished and re- 
membered when marble and statues have 
crumbled to decay. 

"James A. Garfield was born on the 19th 
day of November, 183 1, in Orange, Cuyahoga 
County, Ohio, and died at Elberon, in the 
State of New Jersey, on the 19th day of 
September, 1881. His boyhood and youth 
differed little from others of his own time. 
His parents were very poor. He worked 
from an early age, like most boys of that 
period. He was neither ashamed nor afraid 
of manual labor, and engaged in it resolutely 
for the means to maintain and educate him- 
self. He entered Williams College, in the 
State of Massachusetts, in 1854, and gradu- 
ated with honor two years later, when he 
assumed charge of Hiram College in his own 
State. 

"In 1859, ne was elected to the Senate of 
Ohio, being its youngest member. Strong 
men were his associates in that body, men 
who have since held high stations in the pub- 
lic service. Some of them were his colleagues 
here. In this, his first political office, he dis- 
played a high order of ability, and developed 
some of the great qualities which afterward 
distinguished his illustrious career. 



EULOGIES. l6l 

4 In August, 1 86 1, be entered the Union 
Army, and in September following was com- 
missioned Colonel of the Forty - second Ohio 
Infantry Volunteers. He was promoted suc- 
cessively Brigadier and Major-General of the 
United States Volunteers, and while yet in 
the army was elected to Congress, remaining 
in the field more than a year after his elec- 
tion, and resigning only in time to take his 
seat in the House, December 7, 1863. His 
military service secured him his first national 
prominence. He showed himself competent 
to command in the field, although without 
previous training. He could plan battles and 
right them successfully. As an officer, he 
was exceptionally popular, beloved by his 
men, many of whom were his former students, 
respected and honored by his superiors in 
rank, and his martial qualities and gallant be- 
havior were more than once commended in 
general orders and rewarded by the Govern- 
ment with well-merited promotion. 

" He brought to this wide range of sub- 
jects vast learning and comprehensive judg- 
ment. He enlightened and strengthened 
every cause he advocated. Great in dealing 
with them all, dull and commonplace in 
none, but to me he was the strongest, broad- 
est, and bravest when he spoke for honest 
money, the fulfilment of the nation's prom- 



1 62 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

ises, the resumption of specie payments, and 
the maintenance of the public faith. He 
contributed his share, in full measure, to 
secure national honesty and preserve inviolate 
our national honor. None did more, few, if 
any, so much, to bring the Government back 
to a sound, stable, and constitutional money. 
He was a very giant in those memorable 
struggles, and it required upon his part the 
exercise of the highest courage. A consider- 
able element of his party was against him, 
notably in his own State and some parts of his 
Congressional district. The mad passion of 
inflation and irredeemable currency was 
sweeping through the West, with the greatest 
fury in his own State. He was assailed for 
his convictions, and was threatened with 
defeat. He was the special target for the 
hate and prejudice of those who stood against 
the honest fulfilment of national obligations. 
In a letter to a friend on New Year's eve, 
1867-68, he wrote : 

"'I have just returned from a tedious trip to Ashta- 
bula, where I made a two hours' speech upon finance, 
and when I came home, came through a storm of 
paper-money denunciation in Cleveland, only to find 
on my arrival here a sixteen-page letter, full of alarm 
and prophecy of my political ruin for my opinions on 
the currency.' 

" To the same friend he wrote in 1878 : 



EULOGIES. 163 

"' On the whole it is probable I will stand again for 
the House. I am not sure, however, but the Nine- 
teenth District will go back upon me upon the silver 
question. If they do, I shall count it an honorable 
discharge.' 

" These and more of the same tenor, which 
I might produce from his correspondence, 
show the extreme peril attending his position 
upon the currency and silver questions, but 
he never flinched, he never wavered ; he faced 
all the clangers, assumed all the risks, voting 
and speaking for what he believed would 
secure the highest good. He stood at the 
forefront, with the waxes of an adverse popu- 
lar sentiment beating against him, threatening 
his political ruin, fearlessly contending for 
sound principles of finance against public 
clamor and a time-serving policy. To me his 
greatest effort was made on this floor in the 
Forty-fifth Congress, from his old seat yonder 
near the centre aisle. He was at his best. 
He rose to the highest requirements of the 
subject and the occasion. His mind and soul 
were absorbed with his topic. He felt the 
full responsibility of his position and the 
necessity of averting a policy (the abandon- 
ment of specie resumption) which he believed 
would be disastrous to the highest interests of 
the country. Unfriendly criticism seemed 
only to give him breadth of contemplation 
and boldness and force of utterance. 



164 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

" In General Garfield, as in Lincoln and 
Grant, we find the best representation of the 
possibilities of American life. Boy and man, 
he typifies American youth and manhood, and 
illustrates the beneficence and glory of our 
free institutions. His early struggles for an 
education, his self-support, his 'lack of 
means,' his youthful yearnings, find a pro- 
totype in every city, village, and hamlet of 
the land. 

" His broad and benevolent nature made 
him the friend of all mankind. He loved the 
young men of the country, and drew them 
to him by the thoughtful concern with which 
he regarded them. He was generous in his 
helpfulness to all, and to his encouragement 
and w r ords of cheer many are indebted for 
much of their success in life. In personal 
character he was clean and without reproach. 
As a citizen, he loved his country and her 
institutions, and was proud of her progress 
and prosperity. As a scholar and a man of 
letters, he took high rank. As an orator, he 
was exceptionally strong and gifted. As a 
soldier, he stood abreast with the bravest and 
best of the citizen soldiery of the Republic. 
As a legislator, his most enduring testimonial 
will be found in the records of Congress and 
the statutes of his country. As President, 
he displayed moderation and wisdom, with 



EULOGIES. 165 

executive ability, which gave the highest as- 
surances of a most successful and illustrious 
administration. 

" Mr. Speaker, another place of great honor 
we fill to-day. Nobly and worthily is it filled. 
Garfield, whose eloquent words I have just 
pronounced, has joined Winthrop and Adams, 
and the other illustrious ones, as one of ' the 
elect of the States,' peopling yonder venera- 
ble and beautiful hall. He receives his high 
credentials from the hands of the State which 
has withheld from him none of her honors, 
and history will ratify the choice. We add 
another to the immortal membership. An- 
other enters ' the sacred circle.' In silent 
eloquence from the ' American Pantheon ' 
another speaks, whose life-work, with its treas- 
ures of wisdom, its wealth of achievement, 
and its priceless memories, will remain to us 
and our descendants a precious legacy, for- 
ever and forever." — Accepting t/ie statue of 
Garfield, presented by the State of Ohio, House 
of Representatives, fan. iq, 1886. 



II. Ulysses S. Grant. 

"Mr. President, Citizens of Galena, Ladies and 
Gentlemen : - - 1 can not forbear at the outset 
to express to you the very great honor that I 
feel in being permitted to share with you, at 



1 66 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

the city of Galena, in the observance of the 
seventy-first anniversary of the birth of that 
great soldier who once belonged to you, but 
now, as Stanton said of Lincoln, ' belongs to 
the ages.' No history of the war could be 
written without mentioning the State of 
Illinois and city of Galena. They contributed 
the two most conspicuous names in that great 
civil conflict, the civil and military rulers — 
Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant. No 
history of Ulysses S. Grant can be written 
without there coming unbidden from every lip 
the name Galena, and no faithful biography of 
the great soldier will ever omit the name of 
his cherished friend, General John A. Rawlins, 
also a resident of your city. You have a 
proud history; Grant gave his sword and his 
service to his country at Galena, and gave 
the country back to the people at Appomattox. 
He presided over the first Union meeting ever 
held in Galena, and he presided over the 
greatest Union meeting ever held beneath the 
flag at Appomattox. He was little known at 
the first meeting ; the whole world knew him 
at the last. 

"We are not a nation of hero- worshipers. 
Our popular favorites are soon counted. With 
more than a hundred years of national life, 
crowded with great events and marked by 
mighty struggles, few of the great actors have 



EULOGIES. 16'/ 

more than survived the generation in which 
they lived. Nor has the nation or its people 
been ungenerous to its great leaders, whether 
as statesmen or soldiers. The Republic has 
dealt justly, and I believe liberally, with its 
public men. Yet less than a score of them 
are remembered by the multitude, and the 
student of history only can call many of the 
most distinguished but now forgotten names. 
How few can recall the names of the Presi- 
dents of the United States in the order of 
their administrations ; fewer still can name 
the Governors of Illinois, and the United 
States Senators who have represented this 
State in that great legislative body. 

"This distinguished citizen, whose life we 
commemorate, and the anniversary of whose 
birth we pause to celebrate to-day, was born 
at Point Pleasant, Clermont County, Ohio, on 
April 27, 1822. His early life was not event- 
ful. It did not differ from that of most of 
the boys of his time, and gave no more 
promise than that of the multitude of youth 
of his age and station, either of the past or 
present. Of Scottish descent, he sprang from 
humble but industrious parents, and with faith 
and courage, with a will and mind for work, 
he confronted the problem of life. 

" At the age of seventeen he was sent as a 
cadet to the West Point Military Academy; 



1 68 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

his predecessor having failed to pass the 
necessary examination, the vacancy was filled 
by the appointment of young Grant. At the 
Academy he was marked as a painstaking, 
studious, plodding, persistent pupil, who 
neither graduated at the head nor the foot of 
his class, but stood number twenty -one in a 
class of thirty-nine. His rank at graduation 
placed him in the infantry arm of the service, 
and in 1843 ^ ie was commissioned a brevet 
Second Lieutenant in the Fourth United 
States Regulars. No qualities of an excep- 
tional nature showed themselves up to this 
point in the character of the young officer. 
" His first actual experience in war was in 
Mexico. Here he distinguished himself, and 
was twice mentioned in general orders for his 
conspicuous gallantry. He was twice brevetted 
by the President of the United States for 
heroic conduct at the battles of Monterey, 
Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, Chapultepec 
and Molino del Rey. After the war with 
Mexico he was stationed with his regiment on 
the Northern frontier, and subsequently on 
the Pacific coast in Oregon and California, in 
which latter stations he saw much trying ser- 
vice with the Indians. On July 31, 1854, he 
resigned his commission in the army, after 
eleven years' service therein — a service cred- 
itable to him in every particular, but in no 



EULOGIES. 169 

sense so marked as to distinguish him from 
a score of others of equal rank and oppor- 
tunity. 

" He was successful from the very beginning 
of his military command. His earliest, like 
his later blows, were tellingly disastrous to the 
enemy. First at Paducah, then defeating Polk 
and Pillow at Belmont ; again at Fort Henry, 
which he captured. Then he determined to 
destroy Fort Donelson, and with rare coolness 
and deliberation he settled himself down to 
the task, which he successfully accomplished 
on February 16, 1862. After two days of 
severe battle, 12,000 prisoners and their be- 
longings fell into his hands, and the victory 
was sweeping and complete. He was im- 
mediately commissioned Major- General of 
Volunteers, in recognition of his brilliant 
triumph, and at once secured the confidence 
of the President and trusting faith of the loyal 
North, while the men at the front turned their 
eyes hopefully to their coming commander. 
His famous dispatch to General Buckner, who 
had proposed commissioners to negotiate for 
capitulation — ' No terms except an uncondi- 
tional and immediate surrender can be ac- 
cepted ; I propose to move immediately upon 
your works ' - electrified the country, and 
sent cheer to every loyal heart at home and to 
the brave defenders in the field. It sounded 



170 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

the note of confidence and victory, and gave 
to the Union cause and lovers of the Union 
new and fervent hope. It breathed conscious 
strength, disclosed immeasurable reserve 
power, and quickened the whole North to 
grander efforts and loftier patriotism for the 
preservation of the Union. 

"On March 17, 1864, a little more than 
three years from his departure from Galena, 
where he was drilling your local company as a 
simple captain, Grant assumed the control 
of all the Federal forces, wherever located, 
and in less than fourteen months Lee's army, 
the pride and glory of the Confederate 
Government, surrendered to the victorious 
soldier. It was not a surrender without 
resistance — skilful, dogged resistance. It 
was secured after many battles and fierce 
assaults, accompanied by indescribable toil 
and suffering, and the loss of thousands of 
precious lives. The battles of the Wilderness, 
Spottsylvania, North Anna and Cold Harbor, 
and the siege of Petersburg, witnessed the 
hardest fighting and the severest sacrifices 
of the war, while the loss of brave men in 
the trenches was simply appalling. The 
historian has wearied in detailing them, and 
the painter's hand has palsied with repro- 
ducing the scenes of blood and carnage there 
enacted. General Grant not only directed 



EULOGIES. 171 

the forces in front of Richmond, but the 
entire line of operation of all our armies was 
under his skilful hand, and was moved by 
his masterful mind. The entire field was 
the theatre of his thought, and to his com- 
mand all moved as a symmetrical whole, 
harmonious to one purpose, centering upon 
one grand design. In obedience to his 
orders, Sherman was marching, fighting, and 
winning victories with his splendid army in 
Georgia, extending our victorious banners 
farther and deeper into the heart of the 
Confederacy ; and all the while the immortal 
Thomas was engaging the enemy in another 
part of the far-stretching field, diverting and 
defeating the only army which might success- 
fully impede the triumphant march of Sher- 
man to the sea. Sheridan, of whom General 
Grant said the only instruction he ever re- 
quired was 'to go in,' was going into the 
Shenandoah Valley, that disputed field, the 
scene of Stonewall Jackson's fame. Here 
his dashing army, driving by storm and 
strategy the determined forces of Early, sent 
them whirling back, stripped of laurels pre- 
viously won, without either their artillery or 
battle-flags. Schofield had done grand work 
at Franklin, and later occupied Wilmington 
and Goldsboro, on the distant seacoast, with 
a view to final connection with Sherman 



\-2 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

These movements, and more, absorbed the 
mind of the great commander. 

"The liberal terms given to Lee at Appo- 
mattox revealed in the breast of the hard 
fighter a soft and generous heart. He wanted 
no vengeance ; he had no bitterness in his 
soul ; he had no hates to avenge. He be- 
lieved in war only as a means of peace. His 
large, brave, gentle nature made the surrender 
as easy to his illustrious foe as was possible, 
lie said, with the broadest humanity: 'Take 
your horses and side-arms, all of your per- 
sonal property and belongings, and go home, 
not to be disturbed, not to be punished for 
treason, not to be outcasts ; but go, cultivate 
the fields whereon you fought and lost. Yield 
faithful allegiance to the old flag and the 
restored Union, and obey the laws of peace.' 
Was ever such magnanimity before shown by 
victor to vanquished ? Here closed the great 
war, and with it the active military career of 
the great commander. 

" His civil administration covered eight 
years - - two full terms as President of the 
United States. This new exaltation was not 
of his own asking. He preferred to remain 
Genera] of the Army with which he had been 
so long associated and in which he had ac- 
quired his great fame. The country, how- 
ever, was determined that the successful 



EULOGIES. 173 

soldier should be its civil ruler. The loyal 
people felt that they owed him the highest 
honors which the nation could bestow, and 
they called him from the military to the civil 
head of the Government. His term com- 
menced in March, 1869, and ended in March, 
1877. It constituted one of the important 
periods of our national life. If the period of 
Washington's administration involved the for- 
mation of the Union, that of Grant's was 
confronted with its reconstruction, after the 
bitter, relentless, internal struggle to destroy 
it. It was a most delicate era in which to 
rule. It would have been difficult, embarrass- 
ing and hazardous to any man, no matter 
how gifted, or what his previous preparation 
or equipment might have been. Could any 
one have done better than he ? We will not 
pause to discuss. Different opinions prevail, 
and on this occasion we do not enter the field 
of controversy, but, speaking for myself, I 
believe he was exactly the man for the place, 
and that he filled to its full measure the trust 
to which his fellow citizens called him. He 
committed errors. Who could have escaped 
them, at such a time and in such a place ? 
He stood in his civil station battling for the 
legitimate fruits of the war, that they might be 
firmly secured to the living and to their pos- 
terity forever. His arm was never lifted 



^4 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

against the right; his soul abhorred the 
wrong. His veto of the Inflation bill, his 
organization of the Geneva Arbitration Com- 
mission to settle the claims of the United 
States against England, his strong but concili- 
atory foreign policy, his constant care to have 
no policy against the will of the people, his 
enforcement of the Constitution and its 
Amendments in every part of the Republic, 
his maintenance of the credit of the Govern- 
ment and its good faith at home and abroad, 
marked his administration as strong, wise, 
and patriotic. Great and wise as his civil 
administration was, however, the achieve- 
ments which make him ' one of the immortal 
few whose names will never die ' are found in 
his military career. Carping critics have 
sought to mar it, strategists have found flaws 
in it, but in the presence of his successive, 
uninterrupted, and unrivaled victories, it is the 
idlest chatter which none should heed. He 
was always ready to fight. If beaten to-day, 
he resumed battle on the morrow, and his path- 
way was all along crowned with victories and 
surrenders, which silence criticism, and place 
him side by side with the mighty soldiers of 
the world. 

" With no disparagement to others, two 
names rise above all the rest in American 
history since George Washington — transcend- 



EULOGIES. 175 

ently above them. They are Abraham Lin- 
coln and Ulysses S. Grant. Each will be 
remembered for what he did and accom- 
plished for his race and for mankind. Lin- 
coln proclaimed liberty to four million slaves, 
and upon his act invited ' the considerate 
judgment of mankind and the gracious favor 
of Almighty God.' He has received the 
warm approval of the one, and I am sure he 
is enjoying the generous benediction of the 
other. His was the greatest, mightiest stroke 
of the war. Grand on its humanity side, 
masterly in its military aspect, it has given 
to his name an imperishable place among 
men. Grant gave irresistible power and effi- 
cacy to the Proclamation of Liberty. The 
iron shackles which Lincoln declared should 
be loosed from the limbs and souls of the 
black slaves, Grant with his matchless army 
melted and destroyed in the burning glories 
of the war ; and the rebels read the inspired 
decree in the flashing guns of his artillery, 
and they knew what Lincoln had decreed 
Grant would execute. 

" He had now filled the full measure of hu- 
man ambition, and drunk from every fountain 
of earthly glory. He had commanded mighty 
legions upon a hundred victorious fields. He 
had borne great responsibilities and exercised 
almost limitless power. He had executed 



176 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

every trust with fidelity, and, in the main, 
with consummate skill. He had controlled 
the movement of a larger army than had been 
commanded by any other soldier, the world 
over, since the invention of firearms. He 
was made General of the United States Army 
by Congress on July 25, 1866 — a rank and 
title never given to an American soldier be- 
fore. He had won the lasting gratitude of 
his fellow countrymen, and whenever or wher- 
ever he went among them they crowned him 
with fresh manifestations of their love and 
veneration — and no reverses of fortune, no 
errors of judgment, no vexatious and unfortu- 
nate business complications ever shook their 
trustful confidence. When he sought rest in 
other lands, crowned heads stood uncovered 
in his presence and laid their trophies at his 
feet, while the struggling toiler, striving for a 
larger liberty, offered his earnest tribute to 
the great warrior who had made liberty uni- 
versal in the Republic. Everywhere he went 
grateful honors greeted him, and he was wel- 
comed as no American had been before. He 
girded the globe with his renown as he 
journeyed in the pathway of the sun. Noth- 
ing of human longing or aspiration remained 
unsatiated. He had enjoyed all the honors 
which his lavish countrymen could bestow, 
and had received the respectful homage of 
foreign. nations. 



EULOGIES. 177 

" His private life was beautiful in its purity 
and simplicity. No irreverent oath passed his 
lips, and his conversation was as chaste and 
unaffected as that of simple childhood. His 
relations with his family were tender and 
affectionate. 

" Only a few years ago, in one of his jour- 
neys through the South, when he was receiv- 
ing a great ovation, some colored men 
crowded his hotel to look into the face and to 
grasp the hand of their great deliverer. To 
this intrusion objection was made, and the 
colored men were about to be ejected, when 
the General appeared, and in his quiet way, 
full of earnest feeling, said : ' Where I am 
they shall come also.' He believed in the 
brotherhood of man — in the political equality 
of all men — he had secured that with his 
sword, and was prompt to recognize it in all 
places and everywhere. 

" But, my friends, Death had marked him 
for a victim. He fought Death with his iron 
will and his old-time courage, but at last 
yielded, the first and only time the great 
soldier was ever vanquished. He had routed 
every other foe, he had triumphed over every 
other enemy, but this last one conquered him, 
as in the end he conquers all. He, however, 
stayed his fatal hand long enough to permit 
Grant to finish the last great work of his life 



178 m« kinley's masterpieces. 

— to write the history he had made. True, 
that history had been already written — 
written in blood, in the agony of the dying 
and in the tears of the suffering nation ; 
written in the hearts of her patriotic people. 
The ready pens of others had told more than 
a thousand times the matchless story ; the 
artist had, a hundred times, placed upon 
canvas the soul-stirring scenes in which Grant 
was the central figure ; the sculptor had cut 
its every phase in enduring marble, yet a 
kind Providence mercifully spared him a few 
months longer, that he who had seen it and 
directed it should sum up the great work 
wrought by the grand army of the Republic 
under his magic guidance. He was not an 
old man when he died; but, after all, what a 
completed life was his ! 

" Mighty events and mightier achievements 
were never crowded into a single life before, 
and he lived to place them in enduring form, 
to be read by the millions living and the mil- 
lions yet unborn. Then laying down his pen, 
he bowed resignedly before the Angel of 
Death, saying : ' If it is God's providence 
that I shall go now, I am ready to obey His 
will without a murmur.' Great in life, majes- 
tic in death ! He needs no monument to per- 
petuate his fame ; it will live and glow with 
increased lustre so long as liberty lasts and 



EULOGIES. 179 

the love of liberty has a place in the hearts of 
men. Every soldiers' monument throughout 
the North, now standing or hereafter to be 
erected, will record his worth and work as 
well as those of the brave men who fought 
by his side. His most lasting memorial will 
be the work he did, his most enduring monu- 
ment the Union which he and his heroic as- 
sociates saved, and the priceless liberty they 
secured. 

" Surrounded by a devoted family, with a 
mind serene and a heart resigned, he passed 
over to join his fallen comrades beyond the 
river, on another field of glory. Above him 
in his chamber of sickness and death hung 
the portraits of Washington and Lincoln, whose 
disembodied spirits in the Eternal City were 
watching and waiting for him who was to 
complete the immortal trio of America's first 
and best loved ; and as the earthly scenes re- 
ceded from his view, and the celestial ap- 
peared, I can imagine those were the first to 
greet his sight and bid him welcome. 

" We are not a nation of hero-worshipers. 
We are a nation of generous freemen. We 
bow in affectionate reverence and with most 
grateful hearts to these immortal names, Wash- 
ington, Lincoln, and Grant, and will guard 
with sleepless vigilance their mighty work and 
cherish their memories evermore. 



180 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

1 They were the lustre lights of their day, 
The . . . giants 
Who clave the darkness asunder 
And beaconed us where we are.' " 

- Galena, III., April 27, 189J, Grant's Birth- 
day. 



III. John A. Logan. 

"Mr. Speaker : — A great citizen who filled 
high public stations for more than a quarter 
of a century has passed away, and the House 
of Representatives turns aside from its usual 
public duties that it may place in its perma- 
nent and official record a tribute to his 
memory, and manifest in some degree its 
appreciation of his lofty character and 
illustrious services. General Logan was a 
conspicuous figure in war, and scarcely less 
conspicuous in peace. Whether on the field 
of arms or in the forum where ideas clash, 
General Logan was ever at the front. 

" Mr. Speaker, he was a leader of men, 
having convictions, with the courage to utter 
and enforce them in any place and to defend 
them against any adversary. He was never 
long in the rear among the followers. Start- 
ing there, his resolute and resistless spirit 
soon impressed itself upon his fellows, and 
he was quickly advanced to his true and 



EULOGIES. l8l 

rightful rank of leadership. Without the aid 
of fortune, without the aid of influential 
friends, he won his successive stations of 
honor by the force of his own integrity and 
industry, his own high character and indomi- 
table will. And it may be said of him that he 
justly represents one of the best types of 
American manhood, and illustrates in his life 
the outcome and the possibilities of the 
American youth under the generous influ- 
ences of our free institutions. 

" Participating in two wars, the records of 
both attest his courage and devotion, his valor, 
and his sacrifices for the country which he 
loved so well, and to which he more than 
once dedicated everything he possessed, even 
life itself. Reared a Democrat, he turned 
away from many of the old party leaders when 
the trying crisis came which was to determine 
whether the Union was to be saved or to be 
severed. He joined his old friend and party 
leader, Stephen A. Douglas, with all the ardor 
of his strong nature, and the safety and pres- 
ervation of the Union became the overshadow- 
ing and absorbing purpose of his life. His 
creed was his country. Patriotism was the 
sole plank in his platform. Everything must 
yield to this sentiment ; every other considera- 
tion was subordinate to it ; and so he threw 
the whole force of his great character at the 



Mckinley's masterpieces. 

very outset into the struggle for national life. 
He resigned his seat in Congress to raise a 
regiment, and it is a noteworthy fact that in 
the Congressional district which he repre- 
sented more soldiers were sent to the front 
according to its population than in any other 
Congressional district in the United States. 
It is a further significant fact, that, in i860, 
when he ran for Congress as a Democratic 
candidate, in what was known as the old Ninth 
Congressional District, he received a majority 
of over 13,000; and six years afterward, when 
at the conclusion of the war he ran as a can- 
didate of the Republican party in the State of 
Illinois as Representative to Congress at 
large, the same old Ninth District, that had 
given him a Democratic majority of 13,000 in 
i860, gave him a Republican majority of over 
3,000 in 1866. Whatever else these facts 
may teach, Mr. Speaker, they clearly show 
one thing- -that John A. Logan's old constit- 
uency approved of his course, was proud of 
his illustrious services, and followed the flag 
which he bore, which was the Flag of the 
Stars. 

" His service in this House and in the 
Senate, almost uninterruptedly, since 1867, 
was marked by great industry, by rugged 
honesty, by devotion to the interests of the 
country, and to the whole country, to the 



EULOGIES. 183 

rights of the citizen, and especially by a 
devotion to the interests of his late comrades- 
in-arms. He was a strong and forcible de- 
bater. He was a most thorough master of 
the subjects he discussed, and an intense 
believer in the policy and principles he advo- 
cated. In popular discussion upon the hust- 
ings he had no superiors, and but few equals. 
He seized the hearts and the consciences of 
men, and moved great multitudes with that 
fury of enthusiasm with which he moved his 
soldiers in the field. 

" Mr. Speaker, it is high tribute to any 
man, it is high tribute to John A. Logan, to 
say that, in the House of Representatives, 
where sat Thaddeus Stevens and Robert C. 
Schenck, James G. Blaine and James A. 
Garfield, Henry Winter Davis and William D. 
Kelley, he stood equal in favor and in power 
in party control. And it is equally high 
tribute to him to say that in the Senate of 
the United States, where sat Charles Sum- 
ner and Oliver P. Morton, Hannibal Hamlin 
and Zachariah Chandler, John Sherman and 
George F. Edmunds, Roscoe Conkling and 
Justin S. Morrill, he fairly divided with them 
the power and responsibility of Republican 
leadership. No higher eulogy can be given 
to any man, no more honorable distinction 
could be coveted. He lived during a period 



1S4 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

of very great activities and forces, and he 
impressed himself upon his age and time. 
To me the dominant and controlling force in 
his life was his intense patriotism. 

" It stamped all his acts and utterances, 
and was the chief inspiration of the great 
work he wrought. His book, recently pub- 
lished, is a masterly appeal to the patriotism 
of the people. His death, so sudden and 
unlooked for, was a shock to his countrymen, 
and caused universal sorrow among all classes 
in every part of the Union. No class so deeply 
mourned his taking away as the great volun- 
teer army and their surviving families and 
friends. They were closely related to him. 
They regarded him as their never -failing 
friend. He had been first Commander-in- 
Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, 
and to him this mighty soldier organization, 
numbering more than four hundred thousand, 
was indebted for much of its efficiency in the 
field of charity. He was the idol of the army 
in which he served — the ideal citizen volun- 
teer of the Republic, the pride of all the 
armies, and affectionately beloved by all who 
loved the Union. 

" Honored and respected by his commanders, 
held in affectionate regard by the rank and 
file, who found in him a heroic leader and 
devoted friend, he advocated the most gener- 



EULOGIES. 185 

ous bounties and pensions, and much of this 
character of legislation was constructed by 
his hand. So in sympathy was he with the 
brave men who risked all for country, that he 
demanded for them the most generous treat- 
ment. I heard him declare last summer, to 
an audience of ten thousand people, gathered 
from all sections of the country, at the annual 
encampment of the Grand Army of the 
Republic at San Francisco, that he believed 
that the Government should grant from its 
overflowing Treasury and boundless resources 
a pension to every Union soldier who was 
incapable of taking care of himself, asserting 
with all the fervor of his patriotic soul that 
the Government was unworthy of itself and 
of the blood and treasure it cost if it would 
suffer any of its defenders to become inmates 
of the poorhouses of the land, or be the 
objects of private charity. 

" Mr. Speaker, the old soldiers will miss 
him. The old oak around which their hearts 
were entwined, to which their hopes clung, 
has fallen. The old veterans have lost their 
steady friend. The Congress of the United 
States has lost one of its ablest counselors, 
the Republican party one of its confessed 
leaders, the country one of its noble 
defenders." — House of Representatives, Feb. 
10, 1867. 



1 86 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

IV. Abraham Lincoln. 

" A noble manhood, nobly consecrated to 
man, never dies. The martyr of liberty, the 
emancipator of a race, the savior of the only 
free government among men, may be buried 
from human sight, but his deeds will live in 
human gratitude forever. 

" The story of his simple life is the story of 
the plain, honest, manly citizen, true patriot 
and profound statesman who, believing with 
all the strength of his mighty soul in the 
institutions of his country, won, because of 
them, the highest place in its Government — 
then fell a sacrifice to the Union he held so 
dear, and which Providence spared his life 
long enough to save. We meet to-night to 
do honor to one whose achievements have 
heightened human aspirations and broadened 
the field of opportunity to the races of men. 
While the party with which we stand, and for 
which we stood, can justly claim him, and 
without dispute can boast the distinction of 
being the first to honor and trust him, his 
fame has leaped the bounds of party and 
country, and now belongs to mankind and the 
ages. 

" Lincoln had sublime faith in the people. 
He walked with and among them. He 
recognized the importance and power of an 



EULOGIES. 187 

enlightened public sentiment and was guided 
by it. Even amid the vicissitudes of war he 
concealed little from public review and inspec- 
tion. In all he did he invited rather than 
evaded examination and criticism. He sub- 
mitted his plans and purposes, as far as 
practicable, to public consideration with per- 
fect frankness and sincerity. There was such 
homely simplicity in his character that it 
could not be hedged in by the pomp of place, 
nor the ceremonials of high official station. 
He was so accessible to the public that he 
seemed to take the people into his confidence. 
Here, perhaps, was one secret of his power. 
The people never lost their confidence in 
him, however much they unconsciously added 
to his personal discomfort and trials. 

" The greatest names in American history 
are Washington and Lincoln. One is forever 
associated with the independence of the States 
and formation of the Federal Union ; the 
other with universal freedom and the preser- 
vation of the Union. Washington enforced 
the Declaration of Independence as against 
England ; Lincoln proclaimed its fulfilment 
not only to a down-trodden race in America, 
but to all people for all time who may seek 
the protection of our flag. These illustrious 
men achieved grander results for mankind 
within a single century, from 1775 to 1865, 



i.S8 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

than any other men ever accomplished in all 
the years since first the flight of time began. 
Washington engaged in no ordinary revolu- 
tion ; with him it was not who should rule, 
but what should rule. He drew his sword 
not for a change of rulers upon an estab- 
lished throne, but to establish a new govern- 
ment which should acknowledge no throne 
but the tribune of the people. Lincoln ac- 
cepted war to save the Union, the safeguard 
of our liberties, and reestablish it on ' inde- 
structible foundations' as forever 'one and 
indivisible.' To quote his own grand words : 
Now we are contending ' that this nation, 
under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, 
and that government of the people, by the 
people, for the people, shall not perish from 
the earth.' 

" Lincoln was a man of moderation. He 
was neither an autocrat nor a tyrant. If he 
moved slowly sometimes, it was because it 
was better to move slowly and he was onlv 
waiting for his reserves to come up. Possess- 
ing almost unlimited power, he yet carried 
himself like one of the humblest of men. He 
weighed every subject. He considered and 
reflected upon every phase of public duty. 
He got the average judgment of the plain 
people. He had a high sense of justice, a 
clear understanding of the rights of others, and 



EULOGIES. 189 

never needlessly inflicted an injury upon any 
man. He always taught and enforced the 
doctrine of mercy and charity on every occa- 
sion. Even in the excess of rejoicing, he said 
to a party who came to serenade him a few 
nights after the Presidential election in No- 
vember, 1864: 'Now that the election is over, 
may not all having a common interest reunite 
in a common effort to save our common coun- 
try ? So long as I have been here I have not 
willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom. 
While I am deeply sensible to the high com- 
pliment of a reelection, and duly grateful, as 
I trust, to Almighty God for having directed 
my countrymen to a right conclusion, as I 
think, for their own good, it adds nothing to 
my satisfaction that any other man may be 
disappointed or pained by the result.' " — At 
Albany, N. V., Unconditional Republican Club, 
Feb. 12, i8g5. 



CHAPTER XI. 

OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. 

\ MUCH larger volume than this could be filled with 
the occasional addresses of McKinley. It is not 
claimed for these selections that they do anything 
more than represent the work of the great statesman 
and orator, whose real strength the American people 
are now only beginning to appreciate. These selec- 
tions will stimulate that wider reading and deeper 
study of McKinley's thought, to which by intrinsic 
worth it is so clearly entitled. 

I. New England and the Future. 

'' Mr. President and Gentlemen of the New 
England Society of Pennsylvania : ■ — I make 
grateful acknowledgment for the invitation 
which permits me to join in the observance of 
this interesting anniversary. 

" We dwell to-night in history. Reminis- 
cence and retrospect rule the hour and the 
occasion. We are in spirit with the Pilgrim 
and the Puritan. This Society is a living 
tribute to them, and serves to hold in per- 
petuity, for the present and those who shall 
come after, the character, courage, and exam- 
ple of those who gave birth to liberty on our 

190 



OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. 191 

soil, and secured political freedom and inde- 
pendence to themselves and their posterity. 

" Their descendants, and those not their de- 
scendants, in this year 1890, grateful for the 
inestimable blessings bequeathed to them by 
the fathers and founders of New England, 
who two hundred and seventy years ago 
landed at Plymouth and unfurled the standard 
of their faith, are meeting to-night in the cities 
and villages throughout the Republic, to cher- 
ish their memories and learn again the lessons 
of their trials and triumphs. Characteriza- 
tion of the Puritan has been undertaken by 
author and orator, friendly and otherwise, al- 
most from the time he first set foot on this 
continent, and I present you that of George 
William Curtis, as embodying both criticism 
and eulogy, spoken only as that gifted orator 
can speak. 

" This was his picture of the Puritan : 

'"He was narrow, bigoted, sour, hard, intolerant; 
but he was the man whom God sifted three kingdoms 
to find, as the seed grain wherewith to plant a free 
Republic. He has done more for human liberty than 
any other man in history.' 

"We have a right to take just pride in 
such an ancestry, to proudly recall the noble 
men and true women who, braving all dangers 
and hardships, laid broad and deep the 



192 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

foundations of those institutions that have 
changed the whole face of the northern 
hemisphere, and given to the world a civiliza- 
tion without a parallel in recorded history, 
and to the struggling races of men everywhere 
assurances of the realization of their best 
and highest aspirations. We do not pause to 
discuss their religious forms and beliefs ; all 
will agree that, without loss to religion or 
piety, a broader and more comprehensive 
Christian philanthropy now prevails. 

" Serious was the character of the Puritans 
— sober, earnest, stern, full of faith in God 
and man. They were direct and practical. 
They indulged little in theory or diplomacy. 
They dealt with facts and conditions. They 
were not circuitous or strategic. Their pur- 
poses were not veiled, and they struck straight 
at the mark. The jester and trifler had no 
place among them. Earnest men and true 
were required for pioneers in the cause of 
liberty, and none but such were numbered in 
that noble band. One hundred and one 
landed from the Mayflower. One -half of 
their number, or nearly so, died from expo- 
sure and hardship during the first year, but 
those who survived have influenced the char- 
acter and directed the consciences of the 
millions who have peopled and who now 
people this great American commonwealth. 



OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. I 93 

They struck the blow ; they endured the 
privations ; they kept the faith, not alone for 
themselves, but for mankind ; they looked 
forward, and not backward. It was to escape 
the past and its environments that led them 
from home, and ties, and kindred. Their 
opportunity was the new field, their hope and 
faith, the future, which, under God, they were 
to make for themselves. For this they suf- 
fered ; for this they builded, and they builded 
well and strong. 

"' No lack was in thy primal stock, 

No weakling founders builded here; 
These were the men of Plymouth Rock, 
The Huguenot and the Cavalier. ' 

" It has been said that New England blood 
flows through the veins of one-fourth of our 
entire population. But New England charac- 
ter and New England civilization course 
through every vein and artery of the Repub- 
lic ; and if the New Englanders are not every- 
where found, their light illumines the pathway 
of our progress, and their aims and ideas per- 
meate and strengthen our whole political 
structure. 

kk I have an abiding faith in the ultimate 
justice of the people. Injustice and wrong 
can not long triumph in popular government. 
The future glory of the Republic would seem 



J 94 



Mckinley's masterpieces. 



to have no bounds set upon it, no limit to its 
development or destiny, if all of .us practise 
the simple code of the fathers, ' Liberty, jus- 
tice, and equality,' the trinity of their faith and 
the corner-stone of our hope. In forgetful- 
ness of these fundamental truths lurks the 
danger and menace to the future. We need 
in this generation that earnest purpose, that 
rugged devotion to principle and duty, that 
faith in manhood and reliance upon the 
Supreme Ruler which marked the early New 
England home and character, and that reso- 
lute firmness which gave force to their con- 
victions, result to their resolves, and effect to 
their laws. This is our anchor of safety. 
These annual gatherings of the sons of New 
England serve a noble purpose in keeping 
alive the spirit of the fathers. God grant that 
the fires of liberty which they kindled, and 
which have filled the whole world with hope 
and light and glory, may never, never be 
extinguished ! 

" I bid you, in the language of the beloved 
Whittier — 

" ' Hold fast to your Puritan heritage ; 
But let the free light of the age, 
Its life, its hope, its sweetness add 

To the sterner faith your fathers had. ' 

; ' And, speaking of our country and the 



OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. 1 95 

future, I leave you those other words of 
Whittier : 

" ' We give thy natal day to hope, 

O country of our love and prayer! 
Thy way is down no fatal slope, 
But up to freer sun and air.' " 

— New England Dinner, Continental Hotel, 
Philadelphia, Dee. 22, 18 go. 

II. July Fourth at Woodstock. 

" Mr. President, and my Fellow Citizens : — 
Since 1870 this spot has witnessed the cele- 
bration of the anniversary of our national 
independence. They have been memorable 
occasions. It gives me peculiar pleasure to 
meet the people of New England upon this 
day, and upon this ground, and especially 
is it pleasing to me to respond for the first 
time that I have been able to do so to the 
many generous invitations that I have re- 
ceived from Mr. Bowen, to whom you and all 
of us are indebted for this patriotic assem- 
blage. I have liked Henry C. Bowen for a 
good many things. I have admired him 
since more than forty years ago, when, in the 
midst of great political agitation, as a mer- 
chant of the city of New York, he said: 
'Our goods are for sale, but not our princi- 
ples.' It was this spirit that guided the 



196 M( kinley's masterpieces. 

Revolutionary fathers, and that has won for 
freedom every single victory since. 

" Now, what is the meaning of this day 
and celebration ? Simply that what we have 
achieved must be perpetuated in its strength 
and purity, not giving up one jot or tittle of 
the victories won. More we do not ask, less 
we will not have. There never was a wrong 
for which there was not a remedy. There 
never was a crime against the Constitution 
that there was not a way somewhere and 
somehow found to prevent or punish ; there 
never was such an abuse that did not suggest 
a reform that pointed to justice and right- 
eousness. I am not so much troubled about 
how the thing is to be done as I am troubled 
that the living shall do what is right, as the 
living see the right. The future will take 
care of itself if we will do right. As Glad- 
stone said in his peroration presenting the 
remedial legislation of Ireland : 

"'Walking in the path of justice we can not err; 
guided by that light we are safe. Every step we take 
upon our road brings us nearer to the goal, and every 
obstacle, though it seem for the moment insurmount- 
able, can only for a little while retard, never defeat, 
the final triumph.' 

" The Fourth of July is memorable among 
other things because George Washington 



OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. 1 97 

signed the first great industrial measure on 
that day. The very first industrial financial 
measure that was ever passed in the United 
States was signed by him on the 4th day of 
July, 1789, and therefore I did not think there 
was any impropriety in Senator Aldrich talk- 
ing about the tariff on this day and occasion. 
It would not be proper for me to make a tariff 
speech here, although it has been suggested, 
but I may say with propriety, I am always for 
the United States. I believe in the American 
idea of liberty, so eloquently described by 
Chauncey Depew this morning. I believe in 
American independence, — not only political 
independence, but industrial independence as 
well ; and if I were asked to tell in a single 
sentence what constitutes the strength of 
the American Republic, I would say it was 
the American home, and whatever makes the 
American home the best, the purest, and the 
most exalted in the world. It is our homes 
which exalt the country and its citizenship 
above those of any other land. I have no 
objection to foreign products, but I do like 
home products better. I am not against the 
foreign product, I am in favor of it — for 
taxation ; but I am for the domestic produc- 
tion for consumption. 

" In no country is there so much devolving 
upon the people relating to Government as in 



198 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

ours. Unlike any other nation, here the 
people rule, and their will is the supreme law. 
It is sometimes sneeringly said by those who 
do not like free government, that here we 
count heads. True, heads are counted, but 
brains also. And the general sense of sixty- 
three millions of free people is better and 
safer than the sense of any favored few, born 
to nobility and ruling by inheritance. This 
nation, if it would continue to lead in the race 
of progress and liberty, must do it through 
the intelligence and conscience of its people. 
Every honest and God-fearing man is a 
mighty factor in the future of the Republic. 
Educated men, business men, professional 
men, should be the last to shirk the responsi- 
bilities attaching to citizenship in a free 
government. They should be practical and 
helpful — mingling with the people — not 
selfish and exclusive. It is not necessary 
that every man should enter into politics, or 
adopt it as a profession, or seek political 
preferment, but it is the duty of every man to 
give personal attention to his political duties. 
They are as sacred and binding as any we 
have to perform. 

" We reach the wider field of politics and 
shape the national policy through the town 
meeting and the party caucus. They should 
neither be despised nor avoided, but made 



OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. 1 99 

potent in securing the best agents for execut- 
ing the popular will. The influence which 
goes forth from the township or precinct 
meeting is felt in State and national legisla- 
tion, and is at last embodied in the permanent 
forms of law and written constitutions. I can 
not too earnestly invite you to the closest 
personal attention to party and political cau- 
cuses and the primary meetings of your re- 
spective parties. They constitute that which 
goes to make up, at last, the popular will. 
They lie at the basis of all true reform. It 
will not do to hold yourself aloof from politics 
and parties. If the party is wrong, make it 
better ; that 's the business of the true par- 
tizan and good citizen, for whatever reforms 
any of us may hope to accomplish must come 
through united party and political action." — 
Woodstock, Conn., July 4, i8g/. 

III. Dedication of the Ohio Building. 

" President Peabody, and tJic Members of the 
WorhVs Fair Commission of Ohio, and my 
Fellow Citizens : — I receive the Ohio build- 
ing, the keys of which you have just handed 
me, in behalf of the State, and for the uses of 
its people. I believe all will agree that your 
work has been well and faithfully performed, 
and that the Ohio home you have provided 



200 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

will be both cheerful and comfortable, as it is 
centrally and conveniently located. It is not 
commodious enough to hold all of the Ohio 
people who will attend the great exposition, 
but they will not all be here at the same time, 
and I hope, therefore, that it will be found 
adequate for the purposes designed. The 
assemblage of so large a number of Ohio 
men and women, with the State officials, 
Senators and Representatives in Congress, 
the members of the Legislature, a worthy 
representation of the Ohio National Guard, 
and an ex-President of the United States, 
whom we all delight to honor, is of itself an 
event of historical interest. We meet in the 
chief city of the great Northwest — a city 
which has demonstrated within the past two 
days that Congress made no mistake when it 
assigned to its enterprising citizens the prep- 
aration for the great exhibition which is to 
commemorate the discovery of America. We 
are all proud of Chicago and of the great 
State of Illinois. 

" Ohio, the first-born of the States carved 
out of the great Northwest, greets her younger 
sister, and congratulates her that within her 
jurisdiction the greatest exhibition of the ad- 
vancement of the arts and manufactures and 
of civilization ever known to the world is soon 
to be assembled. In participating in the 



OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. 201 

dedicatory exercises we not only join in the 
world's tribute to the courage and persever- 
ance and the inspired purpose of Columbus, 
but we do homage to the wonderful products 
of man's genius and skill which are soon to 
be unfolded before the vision of mankind. 
This exposition is not only a thank-offering to 
the memory of the discoverer of the New 
World; it is in its highest sense the hallelujah 
of the universe for the triumph of civil liberty 
and Christian civilization. Columbus himself 
said he ' only opened the gates ; ' those who 
came after builded, and how well will be 
shown in these vast and imposing structures 
in 1893. Here in the New World on the North 
American continent, in the United States of 
America, the Almighty has permitted man the 
full development of his God-given rights and 
faculties, and opened up to him the widest 
possibilities and the attainment of the highest 
destiny. Here as nowhere else has been 
wrought out the great problem of a free and 
self-governed people, and the advantages and 
blessings springing therefrom. Ohio has per- 
formed no insignificant part in the advanced 
position which the country now occupies. 
1 [er people have given their energy and enter- 
prise and their blood without stint for the 
accomplishment of what we enjoy to-day. 
Columbus, in one of his letters to Isabella, 



202 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

describing the land and people he discovered, 
enthusiastically declared : 

" ' This country excels all others as far as the day sur- 
passes the night in splendor. The natives love their 
neighbors as themselves, their conversation is the 
sweetest imaginable, their faces always smiling, and so 
gentle are they that I swear to your highness there is 
not a better people in the world. ' 

"We can almost imagine Columbus had 
Ohio and her people in mind when he wrote 
these words. Ohio is the gateway of both the 
South and West, and she possesses unequaled 
facilities for both industry and distribution. 
With such a territory, and the progressive 
population we possess, under our just laws, 
Ohio has surpassed the wildest dreams of her 
founders. It was as William P. Cutler, the 
son of the founder of the Ohio Company, 
said, ' Massachusetts and Virginia joined in 
holy wedlock, and Ohio was the first-born.' 
We are justly proud of our State. In the 
Centennial World's Fair in 1876, in the city 
of Philadelphia, Ohio made suitable demon- 
strations of her advancement. She will now 
show the marvelous progress she has made in 
the succeeding sixteen years. In that period 
her population has increased over 30 per 
cent., and to - day our State possesses nearly 
4,000,000 citizens, over 74 per cent, of whom 



OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. 203 

were born in the State. What a bond of 
union among Ohio people, connected by ties 
of birth ! What a permanent element of citi- 
zenship this constitutes ; and may it not ac- 
count for that native pride, that affectionate 
regard, that tender love for the old State 
which beats in the heart of every Ohioan ? 

" It is gratifying to know that the children 
of Ohio enjoy the very best opportunities for 
education. It is noteworthy that Ohio em- 
ploys 25,000 teachers, and that a half million 
of children daily crowd the doorways of her 
schoolrooms. Is not this a promising assur- 
ance for the future of our great State ? I can 
not refrain from expressing in this presence 
the pride that I felt at the appearance and 
bearing of the National Guard of the State, 
and the other Ohio military companies, which 
have participated in the events of this week. 
It is not generally known, but ought to be, 
that this large body of men came here to par- 
ticipate in the opening of the World's Exposi- 
tion voluntarily, and with no expense to the 
State. I know of no better exhibition of in- 
terest and loyalty anywhere, and am certain it 
will not pass unappreciated. Their presence 
has contributed much to the success of the 
demonstration, and has filled Ohioans with 
pride. The Supreme Court, the Legislature 
of the State, and all the State officials and 



204 Mckinley s masterpieces. 

members of Congress whose presence we ob- 
serve to - day, have also given to all Ohioans 
special and peculiar pleasure. 

" This, however, Mr. President, is but the 
beginning of Ohio's part in the Columbian 
Exposition. She will be here when the world 
assembles at this place — here with the fruits 
of her skill, genius, and invention, the prod- 
ucts of her fields as well as of her factories, 
and I am sure no State in the Union will pre- 
sent a greater variety of productions, or bet- 
ter. It should be the aim of every citizen of 
the State to have Ohio appear at her best ; 
her rank must be maintained; she must be 
kept to the front. Upon the Commission, 
which has thus far done so well, very grave re- 
sponsibilities still rest, and I confidently trust 
to them, with the cooperation of the Legis- 
lature, to see that Ohio does not lose, but 
gains, in the respect and admiration of all the 
people, and makes valuable contributions to 
the world's storehouse of learning." — Chicago, 
III., Oct. 22, i8cj2. 



IV. Business Man in Politics. 

"Interest in public affairs, national, State 
and city, should be ever present and active, 
and not abated from one year's end to the 
other. No American citizen is too great and 



OCCASIONAL ADDRESSES. 205 

none too humble to be exempt from any civic 
duty however subordinate. Every public 
duty is honorable. 

" This menace often comes from the busy 
man or man of business and sometimes from 
those possessing the most leisure or learning. 
I have known men engaged in great commer- 
cial enterprises to leave home on the eve of 
an election, and then complain of the result, 
when their presence and the good influence 
they might properly have exerted would have 
secured a different and better result. They 
run away from one of the most sacred obliga- 
tions in a government like ours, and confide 
to those with less interest involved and less 
responsibility to the community, the duty 
which should be shared by them. What we 
need is a revival of the true spirit of popular 
government, the true American spirit where 
all -not the few — participate actively in 
government. We need a new baptism of 
patriotism, and, suppressing for the time our 
several religious views upon the subject, I 
think we will all agree that the baptism should 
be by immersion. There can not be too 
much patriotism. It banishes distrust and 
treason, and anarchy flees before it. It is a 
sentiment which enriches our individual and 
national life. It is the firmament of our power, 
the security of the Republic, the bulwark of 



206 Mckinley's masterpieces. 

our liberties. It makes better citizens, better 
cities, a better country, and a better civiliza- 
tion. 

" The business life of the country is so 
closely connected with its political life that 
the one is much influenced by the other. 
Good politics is good business. Mere parti- 
zanship no longer controls the citizen and 
country. Men who think alike, although 
heretofore acting jealously apart, are now 
acting together, and no longer permit former 
party associations to keep them from co- 
operating for the public good. They are 
more and more growing into the habit of 
doing in politics what they do in business. 

" The general situation of the country 
demands of the business men, as well as 
the masses of the people, the most serious 
consideration. We must have less partisan- 
ship of a certain kind, more business, and a 
better national spirit. We need an aggressive 
partizanship for country. There are some 
things upon which we are all agreed. We 
must have enough money to run the Govern- 
ment. We must not have our credit tar- 
nished and our reserve depleted because 
of pride of opinion, or to carry out some 
economic theory unsuited to our conditions, 
citizenship, and civilization. The outflow of 
gold will not disturb us if the inflow of gold 



OC< \>I< >NAL ADDRESSES. 207 

is large enough. The outgo is not serious if 
the income exceeds it. False theories should 
not be permitted to stand in the way of cold 
facts. The resources which have been de- 
veloped and the wealth which has been accu- 
mulated, in the last third of a century in the 
United States, must not be impaired or 
diminished or wasted by the application of 
theories of the dreamer or doctrinaire. Busi- 
ness experience is the best lamp to guide us 
in the pathway of progress and prosperity." — ■ 
Chamber of Commerce, Rochester^ X. )., Feb. 



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